The Theranos saga is depressing, but there is one silver lining: the preoccupation with the #girlboss is dead, and Holmes helped kill it
A brown man made her do it! Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of blood-testing startup Theranos, was once seen as a maverick thinker and a fearless feminist icon. Now that she is standing trial for fraud, however, she’s set to argue that she bears no responsibility for her actions: she was completely under the control of her ex-boyfriend and former Theranos executive Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. According to court filings, Holmes’s lawyers will argue that Balwani, who was almost 20 years older than Holmes, emotionally and sexually abused her. Holmes’s lawyers write in the court filings that she was the victim of a “pattern of abuse and coercive control” that essentially “erased her capacity to make decisions”.