Peggy Noonan on what drove Elizabeth Holmes

Elizabeth Holmes was just sentenced to 11 years in federal prison for defrauding investors in her famous Theranos scam.  People used to ask why she did it.  By now that’s clear.  She did it to be important.  She wanted to be admired.  She wished to be thought a genius, a pioneer.  She no doubt wanted money, though part of her con was to live relatively modestly—she wore the same black turtleneck and trousers most days.  She wanted status, then and now as Tom Wolfe said the great subject of American life.  And she seemed to think she deserved these things—that she merited them, simply by walking in.  One thing you pick up as you read John Carreyrou’s great reporting, in these pages and his book, is that she seemed not at all concerned with the negative effects of her actions on others.  She didn’t seem to care that investors lost hundreds of millions, people lost jobs, the great men she invited on her board were humiliated.

~ Peggy Noonan, "Psychos in the C-Suite," The Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2022