| View this email in your browser. August 25, 2021
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! New York’s Kathy Hochul helps tie a record for female governors, a mysterious health incident delays the VP’s trip to Vietnam, and investors are still asking female founders about Elizabeth Holmes . Have a wonderful Wednesday.
– The Holmes Effect. At Fortune’s 2019 Most Powerful Women Summit—the last time we gathered in person!—I moderated a discussion with a group of female founders. It was lively conversation that touched on a range of issues, but there was one moment that stood out—the moment someone mentioned disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.
The founder in question was Julia Cheek, CEO of Everlywell, a home medical-testing startup (which has since flourished, reaching unicorn status in late 2020). Cheek told us that she regularly gets asked about and compared to Holmes—to the point where colleagues and advisors suggested she dye her hair to try to differentiate herself from the Theranos founder. (Cheek was and is blonde, as is Holmes.)
The fact that the two companies have major differences, including the fact that Everlywell does not make its own tests, as Theranos claimed to do, hadn’t been enough to avoid the references, said Cheek. The root of the problem, she said, is that with so few women running venture-backed companies, one “bad actor” can loom large. “It’s challenging because you are compared to this very, very small sample, she said. “There’s 20 other male founders who are also inventing new blood-testing technology, and you don’t hear about them.”
Well, turns out Cheek isn’t alone. In the New York Times, (Fortune alum!) Erin Griffith speaks to a number of women leading science-based companies and finds that the Holmes comparisons haunt many—and not just other young, blonde white women in the testing industry. “I could see no similarity besides the fact that we’re both women in the hard-science space,” Alice Zhang, founder of drug discovery start-up Verge Genomics, tells Griffith.
So, what should we make of this persistent Holmes Effect? Obviously the comparisons are wildly unfair to these founders—and what’s really galling is how superficial they are. Holmes is far from the only founder-turned-pariah; I’m sure entrepreneurs of both genders are now facing hard questions when they try to start, say, a co-working space (a la WeWork’s Adam Neumann), and fair enough. But the clueless “pattern matching” of attaching Holmes’s baggage to any woman in science or healthcare, or fixating on something as silly as broad similarities in appearance is just plain lazy. Science is about experimenting, gathering data, and rigorously testing your hypothesis—not falling back on assumptions. If investors are looking to put their money behind a science-based company, perhaps they should remind themselves of those fundamentals.
Kristen Bellstrom
[email protected]
@kayelbee
P.S.: A little something extra—we’re offering Fortune subscription discounts for Broadsheet readers. Use the code BROADSHEET at this link to get 50% off your annual subscription.
The Broadsheet, Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women, is coauthored by Kristen Bellstrom, Emma Hinchliffe, and Claire Zillman. Today’s edition was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
A note from Fortune The new rules of corporate leadership Subscribe to The Modern Board, our brand new newsletter on what you need to know to lead through today's biggest challenges. Sign up now. ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Number nine. As Kathy Hochul takes the reins as governor of New York, she becomes the ninth woman currently leading a U.S. state. That ties an all-time record set in 2004, but is of course still well below parity in state leadership. Fortune
- Havana in Hanoi? Vice President Kamala Harris's arrival in Vietnam during her Asia trip was delayed yesterday after the U.S. embassy in Hanoi recorded a "report of a recent possible anomalous health incident." That's how the government often refers to the "Havana syndrome" that has sickened U.S. officials around the world since 2016. A spokesperson for Harris said the delay had nothing to do with the vice president's health. CNN
- Shots, shots, shots. With the Pfizer vaccine granted FDA approval, more U.S. companies are starting to mandate employee vaccination. CVS Health, led by CEO Karen Lynch, is one of the first large companies to do so. The company will require COVID vaccination for nurses, care managers, pharmacists, and corporate staff. Washington Post
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao joins the board of Hyliion Holdings Corp. Bed Bath & Beyond hired Macy's exec Nicole Cokley Dunlap as chief diversity officer. Margaret Mitchell, former cohead of Google's ethical A.I. research group, will join the startup Hugging Face; she was fired in February after a controversy over a paper she coauthored. Streaming media platform Plex hired Comcast NBCUniversal exec Lindsay Jespersen as CFO and Zappos' Christa Foley as VP of people. FactSet hired Linda S. Huber of MSCI as CFO. Hard Rock International promoted Shelley Williams to director of global sales for meetings and events.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Back in print. Ebony and Jet magazines went into bankruptcy last year after a tumultuous few years, threatening two publications dedicated to chronicling and shaping Black culture. Now Eden Bridgeman Sklenar is bringing the magazines back as the chair of the publications' new parent company. (Her father, Junior Bridgeman, bought the assets of Ebony Media in December.) Sklenar says she aims to honor Ebony's founders' original mission: "to uplift." New York Times
- Can Delta be contained? New Zealand went into lockdown after finding a single case of COVID-19, which has now spread to more than 100 cases. But the introduction of the more contagious Delta variant to the country is testing Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's strategy of completely containing and eliminating the virus. Ardern says the elimination strategy is "for now" "the right thing for New Zealand." Bloomberg
- WNBA at the White House. WNBA champions Seattle Storm visited the White House this week, marking the first time a professional basketball team has made the trip since 2016. Women's basketball champions weren't invited to the White House during the Trump administration, and several players made clear they wouldn't have gone if extended an invite. The 19th*
ON MY RADAR
Collaborations between Black women are sparking a golden age for female hip-hop Washington Post
'Badass women' reshaped the culture. Now it's time to move on LA Times
Why Amanda Gorman wants to be President Wall Street Journal
PARTING WORDS
"I think she’s so tough. ... When I read that, I was like, 'Good for you, Scarlett.'"
-Elizabeth Olsen on her Marvel costar Scarlett Johansson's lawsuit against Disney
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