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Elizabeth Holmes
17 archived facts 2 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
17 Interesting Facts About Elizabeth Holmes
Interesting Facts (13)
- #001
The Wall Street Journal published John Carreyrou's investigation into Theranos, which alleged that only 15 of the 240 tests the company offered were run on its own Edison machines and that lab results were sometimes inaccurate.
- #002
Holmes's everyday black "uniform" includes a black cotton turtleneck.
- #003
Holmes assembled a star-studded board of seasoned, successful establishment figures, among them George Shultz, Bill Perry, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn and Bill Frist.
- #004
She once spent a summer in Singapore doing groundbreaking SARS research in the labs of the Genome Institute.
- #005
Holmes kept an extremely low profile for the first 11 years after founding her company, but has drawn huge attention since appearing on the cover of Fortune magazine last summer.
- #006
The name Theranos combines the words therapy and diagnosis.
- #007
According to CBS News, Holmes spends every waking hour at the office and doesn't even own a TV.
- #008
She avoids caffeine, sleeps little and works seven days a week.
- #009
As of 2014, Holmes held 84 patents in her own name, 18 in the United States and 66 abroad.
- #010
According to The New Yorker, Holmes "can quote Jane Austen by heart, [but] no longer has time for novels or friends, doesn't flirt, has no television and hasn't taken a vacation in 10 years… She is a vegan and drinks a pulverized mixture of cucumber, parsley, kale, spinach, lettuce and celery several times a day."
- #011
Holmes aimed at more than dominating blood testing: she wanted to create a whole new market, "consumer health technology," that would get people more engaged with their own health care.
- #012
Holmes is famously secretive, and though industry peers criticize her for it, she insists she has to protect her technology from competitors' prying eyes.
- #013
Since its founding in 2003, Theranos has developed blood tests that use one or two drops of blood from a finger prick to help detect dozens of conditions, from high cholesterol to cancer.
Life & Family (4)
- #014
Elizabeth Holmes is known for her deep, husky voice, but some journalists and former colleagues say it was put on and that her natural voice is much higher, as can be heard in a 2005 NPR appearance.
- #015
While still in high school, Holmes completed three college-level Mandarin courses and sold C compilers to Chinese universities.
- #016
Part of what drove Holmes was her fear of needles, a dread so strong in her family that her mother and grandmother fainted at the sight of them.
- #017
Holmes studied chemical engineering at Stanford, earned her first patent there, for an advanced drug-delivery patch, and dropped out just before her sophomore year.
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
- IMDb
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