Holmes Prison Rebrand

A discussion about Elizabeth Holmes' recent transformation and PR efforts to rebrand herself before prison.

"The story is she was convicted of defrauding investors upwards of hundreds of millions of dollars, got sentenced to 12 years in prison. She pulled a wild move where she had a baby - baby #1 is 2 or 3 years old, baby #2 is now like 6 months old. She made her plea to the government saying 'Actually I have a newborn, you can't put me in prison' and they bought it. They delayed her prison sentence.

The New York Times did this whole story about how Elizabeth was this persona and how her new persona is Liz. She's a normal mom now, she speaks like a normal woman. Elizabeth Holmes was known for talking in a deep voice and wearing black turtlenecks. She admits 'I did that because I was a woman, I'm blonde, I wanted to be taken seriously.'

There's this story about her dog Balto. In the waning days of Theranos, Holmes got a Siberian Husky named Balto. Last year when a mountain lion carried Balto away from the front porch, Holmes spent 16 hours searching in the woods, digging through brambles and poison oak hoping to find him alive. Everyone knew the dog was dead but Holmes kept searching. She was relentless. The certainty, the fanaticism - it's the same way Holmes kept hanging on at Theranos. She eventually found Balto in the woods, but by then the dog had been torn apart by a mountain lion.

The New York Times is using this to paint this whole story about how she's just well-intentioned but gets caught up in the fanaticism."