UPDATE: On March 14, 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, Inc. with "an elaborate fraud", saying she and Theranos's ex-president had lied for years about the company's technology, and fooled investors into giving Theranos hundreds of millions of dollars. As part of her settlement with the SEC, Holmes will pay a penalty of $500,000, must relinquish majority control of her company, and can not lead a public company for a period of 10 years. The SEC found that Holmes "made numerous false and misleading statements in investor presentations, product demonstrations, and media articles"—and that includes interviews with Glamour.
The Valley's New Visionary: "Ever since I was a little girl, I have always been inspired by the concept that people can create and build products that change the world," says Holmes, photographed at the Palo Alto, California, headquarters of Theranos, the company she built.
By now the tech-world unicorn story is well-known: Bright mind ditches school, launches company from garage, changes the world, makes millions. This version of the tale, though, has a welcome twist: The wunderkind dropout is a woman. As an undergrad at Stanford University, Elizabeth Holmes persuaded an engineering professor to admit her into his graduate research lab; during her sophomore year she founded a fledgling company now called Theranos in her dorm room. By 20 she had dropped out to devote every waking moment to that business. Its goal? Both to revolutionize ordinary blood tests, and to change the control average citizens have over their health.
Today Theranos is no longer a dorm-room dream but a company which claims that, with just a few drops of blood, it's possible to detect everything from diabetes to cancer. It's valued at $9 billion—which makes Holmes, 31, the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world. Her fast-track rise has led some to say she's the next Steve Jobs. It's an apt description—she does have a "uniform" of black turtlenecks, is secretive about her methods, and has amassed a collection of critics who say her technology is overhyped. Still, she's flattered by the comparison. "I am humbled if people say that," Holmes says. "[But] I want to be able to be Elizabeth Holmes. To be able to demonstrate that women can build technology companies like this and make a real impact in the world as scientists and engineers."
Holmes credits her parents with fueling her ambition. When she was about seven, she showed them drawings for a time machine; rather than dismissing her, they regularly asked how the project was going. Not all of her peers had that kind of support, she knew: "My brother would get engineering Lego sets as a kid, and my friends would get Barbie dolls," she says. "I did get the Barbies and a lot of Legos." It was a beloved uncle, with whom Holmes spent summers and holidays, who was an inspiration for Theranos. Diagnosed with skin cancer that quickly spread to his brain and bones, he died before Holmes was able to say goodbye. She wondered, What if an ordinary blood test could have caught the disease earlier? "My wish is that no person has to go through what it means to have to say, 'If only I had known sooner,'" she says.
So for the past 12 years, her mission—and make no mistake, it is a mission—has been to democratize access to potentially lifesaving lab testing by making it painless, accessible, and affordable. (She estimates that 40 percent of patients don't get the blood tests they are prescribed because those tests can be frightening, inconvenient, and expensive.) She and her team were in "stealth mode" for 10 years, building the technology in fits and starts. "We sat down and said, 'OK, we are going to fail 10,000 times on this—figure out how to get it to work the 10,001st.'" Some argue she may not have nailed it yet; just as Glamour went to press in mid-October, a piece in The Wall Street Journal cited former employees' claims raising doubts about the accuracy of Theranos' tests. Holmes strongly refutes the charges. But she has never let critics deter her: "I think every bad thing you could possibly experience in trying to do something like this, we have experienced," she says. "But we know why we are doing it—people are counting on us because of what [this technology] means to a cancer patient, what it means to someone who has no ability to afford health care. That keeps you going in an incredible way."
So she's continuing to forge ahead. Next up, her partnership with Walgreens; since 2013 they have opened Theranos Wellness Centers in Arizona and California, where patients can get more than 250 tests—everything from fertility workups to screenings for herpes—many for less than $10. "We want to perfect the model in Arizona [so we can] realize the highest quality standards" and set up centers nationwide, she says. Notes Sanjay Gupta, M.D., associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, "The potential impact is enormous. It could change the way we test blood in the U.S. certainly, but even more so around the world.... I think this could help people take control of their own health care."
And that is Holmes' endgame—not just to create new technology, but to create change. This year she worked with Arizona legislators to help pass a groundbreaking law allowing consumers direct access to blood tests without a prescription. "The only way we can shift our health care system is if individuals begin to understand they have a basic right to their own health information," says Holmes. Telling them they can't, she explains, "is like saying to women, 'You don't have the right to vote because you're not intelligent enough to make that decision.' If you enfranchise people, and make the information understandable, they will engage."
HER WORDS TO LIVE BY: "Pursue whatever it is that you are so passionate about that you don't want to stop doing it."
*Donna Fenn is a journalist who covers entrepreneurship.*Editor's note: After Glamour went to press, the FDA released documents (see here and here) based on a site visit to Theranos stating that the company's nanotainer (the device used to collect finger-prick blood samples) is an "uncleared medical device" and also alleging poor handling of customer complaints. Some people who have had their blood tested have also come forward to say their results with Theranos were much different than with testing at more traditional medical centers. Theranos has stopped using its nanotainer device except for its FDA-approved herpes test; in a statement, Theranos said that the company has corrected any problems the FDA observed within seven days of the site visit and that it is "currently waiting for clearance" from the FDA until it resumes using the device for testing.
