Elizabeth Holmes has said she is working on new healthcare-related inventions and will continue to do so behind bars in a new interview after a high-profile trial that saw her getting convicted and jailed on fraud charges.
In an interview to The New York Times, the former chief executive of Theranos admitted to making “many mistakes”.
“I made so many mistakes and there was so much I didn’t know and understand, and I feel like when you do it wrong, it’s like you really internalise it in a deep way,” Holmes was quoted as saying to the newspaper.
“I still dream about being able to contribute in that space. I still feel the same calling to it as I always did and I still think the need is there.”
The interview has come under backlash on social media and The New York Times has been accused of offering the ex-CEO, convicted on multiple counts of defrauding investors in her blood-testing start-up, a chance of embellishing her image through the interview.
In the interview, Holmes admitted she put up appearances during her time at Theranos so she could be taken seriously.
“I believed it would be how I would be good at business and taken seriously and not taken as a little girl or a girl who didn’t have good technical ideas,” she said.
“Maybe people picked up on that not being authentic since it wasn’t.”
Earlier last month, Holmes delayed starting her prison sentence for defrauding Silicon Valley investors by filing yet another appeal over her conviction.
She had been due to self-report to a prison camp on 27 April to begin the 11.25-year sentence she was handed after a jury convicted her on multiple counts related to her fraudulent blood-testing start-up.
Her lawyers informed US district judge Edward Davila that instead of entering prison she appealed a decision he made earlier in April ordering her to begin her sentence.
Holmes, 39, has two young children, the first of whom was born before her 2021 fraud trial and the second who was born after her November sentencing. She was found guilty in January 2022 on four of 11 charges that she defrauded Theranos investors out of more than $100m.
Holmes started Theranos after dropping out of Stanford University at age 19, but the company collapsed in 2018 after it was revealed that its technology did not work.
