Elizabeth Holmes Bio, Age, Sunny, Husband, Documentary, Theran

Elizabeth Holmes Biography

Elizabeth Holmes is a former biotechnology entrepreneur and convicted American fraudster. Holmes founded and served as the CEO of Theranos, a now-defunct health technology company, in 2003.

Its valuation skyrocketed after the company claimed to have revolutionized blood testing by developing methods that could use surprisingly small amounts of blood, such as a fingerprick.

Elizabeth Holmes Age

She is 39 years old as of 3 February 2023. She was born on 3 February 1984 in Washington, D.C., United States. Her birth name is Elizabeth Anne Holmes.

Elizabeth Holmes Husband – Children

Elizabeth was romantically involved with Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, a Pakistani-born Hindu who immigrated to India and then the United States. They met on a trip to Beijing in 2002 and moved into an apartment together in 2005. Balwani was 19 years Holmes’s senior and married to another woman at the time. They co-managed the company with a corporate culture of secrecy and fear, and Balwani resigned in 2016 as a result of the investigations. Holmes became engaged to William “Billy” Evans, a 27-year-old heir to Evans Hotels, in early 2019, and they reportedly married in a private ceremony in mid-2019.

Holmes gave birth to a son in July 2021, and it was revealed in October 2022, just weeks before her sentencing hearing, that she was pregnant again. A court filing from February 2023, as part of an argument for delaying the start of her prison term, revealed that Holmes had given birth to a second child in February 2023.

Elizabeth Holmes Family (Parents and Siblings)

Christian Rasmus Holmes IV, her father, was a vice president at Enron, an energy company that went bankrupt after an accounting fraud scandal. Noel Anne (née Daoust), her mother, worked as a Congressional committee staffer. Christian later worked as an executive in government agencies such as USAID, the EPA, and the USTDA. Christian has Danish ancestors. Charles Louis Fleischmann, a Hungarian immigrant who founded the Fleischmann’s Yeast company, was one of her paternal great-great-great-grandfathers.

Elizabeth Holmes Education

Holmes received his high school diploma from St. John’s School in Houston. She was interested in computer programming during high school and claims to have started her first business selling C++ compilers to Chinese universities. Her parents had arranged for Mandarin Chinese home tutoring, and Holmes began attending Stanford University’s summer Mandarin program halfway through high school. Holmes enrolled at Stanford in 2002 to study chemical engineering and work as a student researcher and laboratory assistant in the School of Engineering.

Elizabeth Holmes Documentary

The Dropout, a podcast and documentary about the Holmes story produced by ABC News, Nightline, and Rebecca Jarvis, was released in January 2019. It included interviews and deposition tapes of key figures such as Elizabeth Holmes, Sunny Balwani, Christian Holmes (Elizabeth’s brother), Tyler Shultz (Theranos whistleblower and grandson of Board Member George Shultz), and others. An interview with Jeff Coopersmith, the attorney who represents Balwani, was also included in the series.

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, a two-hour documentary film first shown at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 2019, premiered on HBO on March 18, 2019. It depicts the claims and promises made by Holmes in the final years of Theranos, and how the company was eventually brought down by the weight of many falsehoods. The documentary concludes in 2018, with Holmes and Balwani charged with multiple offenses.

Elizabeth Holmes Theranos

Elizabeth founded Real-Time Cures to “democratize healthcare” in 2003. She wanted to perform blood tests with very small amounts of blood, but her Stanford medicine professor, Phyllis Gardner, rejected her idea. Holmes was successful in convincing her advisor and dean of the School of Engineering, Channing Robertson, to support her idea, and the company was renamed Theranos. Holmes admired Apple founder Steve Jobs and often dressed in black turtlenecks in his style. She spoke in a deep baritone voice, but a former Theranos colleague later claimed he heard her speak in a stereotypically young woman’s voice.

Gardner of Stanford disputes Holmes’ natural deep voice. Her family has insisted that her deep voice is genuine. Elizabeth founded Theranos in 2004 and raised $6 million in that year. In 2011, she met George Shultz and together they formed the most illustrious board in US corporate history. She announced a collaboration with Walgreens in 2013 to open in-store blood sample collection centers. In 2014, Holmes was featured on the covers of Fortune, Forbes, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and Inc. Theranos was valued at $9 billion, with more than $400 million in venture capital raised. In 2015, Holmes signed agreements to use Theranos technology with Cleveland Clinic, Capital BlueCross, and AmeriHealth Caritas.

Elizabeth Holmes Sentence (Verdict, Trial, Sentenced)

On June 15, 2018, a federal grand jury indicted Elizabeth Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, former Theranos chief operating officer and president, on nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Prosecutors claim that Holmes and Balwani conspired to defraud investors in one scheme and doctors and patients in the other. Holmes stepped down as CEO of Theranos but remained the company’s chairman. Holmes was tried in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, with defense counsel from Williams & Connolly.

The trial began on August 31, 2021, after being postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Holmes’ pregnancy. For seven days, Holmes testified in self-defense, claiming she was misled by her staff and that her ex-romantic partner Sunny Balwani wielded power over her during their relationship. The evidence in the case outlined Holmes’ role in staged demonstrations, falsified validation reports, false contract claims, and overstated financials at Theranos.

Holmes was found guilty on four counts of defrauding investors and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud on January 3, 2022. U.S. District Judge Edward Davila sentenced Holmes to 114 years in prison on November 18, 2022, and ordered her to surrender by April 27, 2023. The sentence included a $400 fine, or $100 for each count of fraud, as well as three years of supervised release following the prison term.

With good behavior, she could get about a 15% reduction in prison time. Following her conviction, Holmes and her companion allegedly attempted to flee by purchasing one-way plane tickets to Mexico. Holmes’ legal team stated that they purchased the tickets in the hope that the case outcome would have been different, and that she canceled her ticket after losing the case.