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This story is part of How We Win in 2019, a year-long exploration of gender equality in the workplace. Read more stories here.
It's been almost five years since Theranos, a Silicon Valley-based, dynamic health care company at the time, was not all that she had promised. But our thirst for stories of the history of the doomed society and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, seems inexhaustible. Yesterday (March 18th), we received another one: HBO's two-hour documentary, L & # 39; inventor.
For those already familiar with history, the documentary offers few new facts. But more than in other stories, L & # 39; inventor strives to explain the public's willingness to believe a woman in technology if it is captivating in a certain way, and to find a particular kind of joy in its downfall.
The points of the plot of L & # 39; inventor do not stray too far from John Carreyrou's reports for The Wall Street Journal, or his 2018 book Bad blood, or the recent podcast on ABC entitled "The Dropout". Elizabeth Holmes was 19 years old when she left Stanford. Armed with a compelling story about needle scare and the untimely death of an uncle that could have been prevented through early diagnosis, Holmes launched Theranos to develop a new technology to detect diseases from a simple drop of blood. She has managed to secure outstanding public figures as board members and investors, and even some major partnership agreements, including one with Walgreens, which offered pharmacy customers a menu of 200 blood tests, all available without a prescription. But Edison, Theranos's "microfluidic" blood badyzer, never really worked. Laboratory technicians at the company's headquarters have either faked the results using blood test devices built by other manufacturers, or sent defective devices to patients.
Thanks to Carreyrou's persistent whistleblowers and investigative reporting, the fraud committed by Holmes and the president of the company / operations manager (and Holmes' boyfriend, Ramesh "Sunny "Balwani) has been made public. The company was sanctioned by government authorities, lost its contract with Walgreens and was sued. Holmes and Balwani were found guilty of mbadive fraud and Theranos was closed.
The HBO podcast and documentary include talks with the whistleblowers: Tyler Shultz (grandson of former Secretary of State George Shultz, member of the Theranos Board of Directors and close to Holmes) and Erika Cheung (laboratory badistant in Theranos). before alerting regulators about the parcel practices of the company).
Their perspectives help explain the cult of personality that has developed around Holmes and his infectious idealism. "It was hard to really know who she was. But in a way, I idolized it, basing myself on the little that I had read – being a woman in the field of science, a woman in technology, the fact that she founded her own company – it really excited me, "says Cheung in the documentary. "She was a very good idol to have. In a way, I was super naive and I drank the Kool – aid a bit too fast and I was more excited about being part of the team. ".
Silicon Valley suffers from the lack of women leaders, especially those who have invented their own technology and founded their own business. In 2017, 17% of US startups had founders and reported about 2.2% of total venture capital dollars.
It is no wonder that many workers, investors and journalists have seen Holmes play this role and work to move it from university dropping out to the stage. By the mid-2010s, she was suddenly everywhere, at technical conferences, at TED conferences, and in front of Fortune, where a headline puzzled as to whether she was the next Steve Jobs (the profile in the issue launches her into the mainstream of Silicon Valley).
In Bad bloodCarreyrou calls Holmes's gaze "almost hypnotic". "Photos of Holmes herself – young, blonde and blue-eyed – the cynics could be excused for thinking," Oh, I understand. I see why all these angry people are gushing out of their business, "reads the profile of Fortune Magazine 2014." And after a little talk with her, we can still wonder what is all this fuss. She is polite and speaks softly. She listens. She naturally laughs at others' jokes and does not try to crush them. His voice is worse than expected, but that's all you notice at first. That and his youth.
L & # 39; inventor This suggests that Holmes' haunting personality and her position as a rare woman in Silicon Valley have prompted donors to open their checks, as well as old white and male personalities – like the former secretary of the board. State Henry Kissinger, former CDC chief William Foege Senator Sam Nunn – to join his board of directors before doing due diligence regarding his technology. Even as things began to deteriorate, Holmes strove to maintain his cultured image, the cult of personality that surrounded him. As Tyler Shultz recalls in the film, a split was made between "the world of carpet, where Elizabeth was a goddess, everyone loved the floor on which she walked … [and] tile side, where nothing works, it's a sinking boat, everything is a lie. "
L & # 39; inventor is a kind of performative interpretation of the experience of those who were drawn by Holmes 'personality in the early and mid-2010s. Holmes' wide-eyed, slightly robotic photos and images occupy much of time spent on the screen of the documentary. The film invites you to badyze each gesture, each micro-expression, and to try to determine if Holmes really believed or if she was a crook from the beginning.
In the same way, after its downfall, critics began to separate the highly public and deliberately constructed appearance of Holmes in search of a tell. The journalists wrote about her hair, her clothes, the (apparently false) tone of her voice, as if these factors alone would indicate that she is somehow psychologically sick.
Sexism was not responsible for the fall of Holmes, of course. As L & # 39; inventor and other stories are clear, his story is a lesson that you can not continue to simulate, you must succeed. But there is a particular way of bringing down powerful women, a pleasure and joy less common with male leaders. And unlike prostitutes who, for example, have created fake streaming or mismanaged books, Holmes' deception has endangered the lives of patients, allowing us to feel more entitled to celebrate his downfall. a kind of revenge.
L & # 39; inventorbecause anyone who starts to watch knows how it's going to end, exists because of this schadenfreude. However, it is important to consider the role that bad can play in the pleasure of watching it. As reporter Ann Friedman last year in Elle, we should be angry at Holmes – but we must also be wary of what we will actually learn, culturally, from the story of Theranos. "Women are constantly being guessed. we strive to be taken seriously with respect to our harbadment experiences, our scale of pain in the hospital or our attempts to get the credit we deserve for our work, "wrote journalist Ann Friedman last year in Elle. "So, even though part of me admires Holmes' audacity, I am especially mad at her for pushing women back, reinforcing the idea that we should not be believed."
This story is part of How We Win in 2019, a year-long exploration of gender equality in the workplace. Read more stories here.
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