The founder of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes, almost always used a deep baritone voice, but former insiders say that she was falsified.

• Elizabeth Holmes, founder of the Theranos blood test startup, is the subject of a new documentary from the HBO channel titled "The inventor: the search for blood in Silicon Valley ".
• Holmes' cover, including the HBO documentary, a fiction book and a series of podcasts, offers a fascinating look at Holmes, who managed to convince investors that Theranos had a working technology and precise results. , while this was not the case.
• The mystery surrounding Holmes 'baritone voice, which according to Theranos' initiates has been an affect, deserves to be underlined, perhaps being intended to help her integrate into the predominantly male-dominated technological scene of Silicon Valley.
• Former employees of Theranos hinted that Holmes' voice was wrong and remembered cases where she had slipped and that her voice had raised a few octaves.

According to several accounts, Elizabeth Holmes carefully created and nurtured a character while she ran her blood test business, Theranos, including adopting a distinctly serious voice that former employees suspected her of. 39, having completely fabricated.

Holmes' anxieties as a leader of the Theranos, now dissolved, have been well documented: she methodically designed a character borrowing from the Silicon Valley's elite, such as her remarkable Steve Jobs outfits -some turtlenecks and black pants.

But the release of "The Inventor", an HBO documentary about the rise and fall of Theranos, brought to light the mystery of Holmes' voice.

In the making of the documentary, more than 100 hours of internally recorded video from Theranos were leaked to HBO directors, including in-depth interviews with Holmes, giving a fresh look at the entrepreneur and his company. In the pictures, his baritone is in full screen.

His voice is a hallmark, as many potential investors and Theranos employees have noted in the book "Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Start-up". In the book, many said they were taken aback by meeting Holmes for the first time, thanks to his astonishingly serious voice and his big, impbadive eyes.

However, former employees of Theranos shared their suspicions that Holmes' deep voice was only a trick.

An employee talked about an evening with Holmes during which she "fell into a more natural young woman's voice," wrote John Carreyrou, a Wall Street Journal reporter, in her book published in 2018. The employee noted that the pitch of the sound was "several octaves higher than his normal baritone."

The former employee badumes that Holmes depended on her voice because she was desperately trying to integrate and be taken seriously as a young woman in the predominantly male scene of Silicon Valley .

Read more: Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of Theranos, inspired by a former Apple employee, goes from "clumsy accountant" to his signature black-tailed Steve Jobs style

A podcast released by ABC News later in 2018 added strength to the rumor that Holmes falsified his deep voice. In the podcast, titled "The Dropout," former employees said that Mrs. Holmes "sometimes lost her character" and found her authentic voice. This was especially happening after she drank, said employees on the podcast.

It's hard to find evidence that Holmes used what could be his natural voice. The Cut reports that videos where its voice misses can be heard are often removed from the Internet rather quickly, usually in a day or two.

However, the release of the HBO documentary allowed the viewer to focus on Holmes' voice. People on social media have expressed intense fascination with his voice . The documentary is able to show the complete character of Holmes in a way that makes the mystery of his voice all the more intriguing.

Holmes has not publicly commented on his voice, nor acknowledged its authenticity. This means that we can only guess why exactly she would choose to change her voice, which would require her to devote herself entirely to remembering the trick every time she spoke.

Some say she was taking all possible steps to progress in Silicon Valley, dominated by men. Others wonder if she was trying to outdo herself as much as she could instead of the high voice and vocal fry, two terms used to criticize and control the higher voices of women.

But whether Holmes' voice is authentic or not, she managed to convince the big players in Silicon Valley that she was the real deal. She managed to convince powerful men with vast pockets to invest in her blood test business. By hiring successful venture capitalists like Henry Draper and political heavyweights like former Secretary of State Harry Kissinger, Holmes has been able to raise more than $ 700 million in investment capital. .

At its peak, Theranos rose to $ 9 billion and Holmes was hailed as the youngest billionaire in the world. Since then, her company has been closed and faces charges of fraud from the SEC and the Department of Justice.

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