While Elizabeth Holmes was busy scamming the entire health-care tech industry (allegedly), she apparently found the time to get engaged! The 35-year-old Theranos founder is set to wed William "Billy" Evans. According to a report from the Daily Mail, Holmes's fiancé is the 27-year-old heir to the Evans Hotel Group, a collection of hotels in San Diego, California, founded by his grandparents. It's possible they bonded over their shared wealth or interest in tech, as Evans is an MIT grad who worked at Linked In, then Luminar Technologies, a driverless-car start-up. According to Linked In, Evans stopped working there in January—maybe to spend more time with his bride-to-be while he still can? Holmes is being charged with 11 criminal felony counts, including wire fraud and conspiracy, and could face jail time. Holmes has pleaded not guilty. While Holmes is awaiting trial, the couple has been living large in a luxury apartment in San Francisco, according to Vanity Fair, and they even attended Burning Man together just days before Theranos employees were notified the company was officially shutting down. In their San Francisco home, they coparent Holmes's "wolf," Balto. As it turns out, Balto is actually just a Siberian husky. Besides her extensive legal troubles, Holmes and Evans sound very happy together. She reportedly wears his M.I.T. signet ring on a necklace (a unique spin on the traditional engagement ring, perhaps?) and “the couple regularly post stories on Instagram professing their love for each other,” says Vanity Fair. Their accounts are private, but based on screenshots obtained by the magazine, they look blissfuly in love. With the news of the couple's engagement, people are now speculating what will come of their wedding. Will they tie the knot pre-trial? Will Evans stick by her side? Will she wear a black turtleneck at the altar? Twitter has some thoughts. “Elizabeth Holmes is engaged, Elizabeth Holmes is facing criminal charges, how cool if she was wearing an orange jumpsuit for the wedding?” one user wrote. Others think the bride will stick to her signature turtleneck look. “A person i have known since the age of five is now apparently engaged to evil blood scammer Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos?? ?” a shocked user, apparently from Evans's past, said. “Will Henry Kissinger attend their prison wedding??? WILL THE BRIDE WEAR A BLACK TURTLENECK??? ?” In case you need it, Holmes, we have a lengthy list of beautiful high-neck wedding dresses right here! See more: How to Support Your Partner Through a Career Transition<doc-sep>Prior to the release of HBO's documentary about Elizabeth Holmes, it was revealed that the Theranos CEO is happily engaged Elizabeth Holmes first rose to prominence in 2014 as the CEO of healthcare start-up Theranos, but the entrepreneur became infamous about 20 months later, after being charged with an “elaborate years-long” fraud having duped millions. Ahead of the release of HBO documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley on Sunday, which traces the rise and fall of the one-time Silicon Valley darling, it was revealed that Holmes, 35, is currently engaged. Get push notifications with news, features and more. Vanity Fair was the first to break the news, reporting in a February story that Holmes is currently living in San Francisco, and “engaged to a younger hospitality heir, who also works in tech” and graduated from M.I.T. The Daily Mail went on to report that Holmes’ fiancé is William “Billy” Evans, 27, whose grandparents founded the Evans Hotel Group — which currently owns three major resorts in California. According to the outlet, Evans graduated from college with a Bachelor’s Degree in Science and Economics, and has subsequently worked at LinkedIn and California-based company Luminar Technologies. Here’s everything you need to know about Holmes, her elaborate scheme, and what’s next for her. Holmes’s early beginnings Holmes was born in Washington D.C. to father Christian Holmes, an Enron executive and mother Noel Anne Daoust, who worked as a Congressional committee staffer. The family later relocated to Houston, Texas where Holmes showed early signs of academic prowess. Her short-lived career at Stanford Holmes applied and was accepted to Stanford University in 2001, where she studied chemical engineering. Early on, she claims she started thinking bigger and about founding her own business. “At a relatively early age I began to believe that building a business was perhaps the greatest opportunity for making an impact,” she told Fortune in 2014. “Because it’s a tool for making a change in the world.” In 2003, the semester after doing a summer stint at the Genome Institute of Singapore, where she was involved in work to develop systems to detect SARS, Holmes dropped out of Stanford to found Theranos. Squawk Box - Season 20 Elizabeth Holmes | Credit: David Orrell/CNBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images Founding Theranos Inspired by a lifelong fear of needles and having her blood drawn, Holmes sought to revolutionize the healthcare industry by developing a method of comprehensive testing from just a few drops of blood, instead of several vials, which is currently standard practice in the medical field. Holmes’s goals were clear and pure. And she was very convincing in her pitch — one of the first to hear it was her chemical engineering professor, Channing Robertson. Holmes initially approached him to help co-found what would be Theranos. Robertson told Forbes he was wowed by her mission and initiative. “[She said] I want to create a whole new technology, and one that is aimed at helping humanity at all levels regardless of geography or ethnicity or age or gender,'” Robertson recalled, and later joined Theranos as a paid consultant and gave up his tenured position at Stanford to do so. Elizabeth Holmes Elizabeth Holmes | Credit: HBO Her VIP circle of trust In addition to Holmes’s passion for the company and her change-the-world ideals, one of Holmes’s greatest strengths, as described by former employees, board members, former teachers, etc. is her steely-eyed focus and her uniquely low speaking voice. “She’s incredibly passionate,” former Theranos employee Anna Arriola said on “The Dropout” podcast. “She’s very energetic, very expressive with their hands and has a very unique, distinctive voice that you kind of just get drawn into what she is conveying and her conviction it really, really shines through,” she said. Those tactics helped persuade a group of impressively high-profile individuals to join Holmes’s cause. In 2014 at the height of Holmes’s buzz and estimated wealth, the Theranos board included: former U.S. Secretary of State, Treasury, and Labor George Shultz; former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry; former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger. In addition to those heavy-hitters, at the height of its Silicon Valley popularity Theranos had raised an estimated $724 million in funding from a who’s who of investors like Oracle’s Larry Ellison, and a rumored $100 million from Rupert Murdoch. These were historical numbers for a start-up, and in the fall of 2014, Holmes was named one of Forbes’s richest women in America and her start-up was valued at $9 billion. Flaws in the armor Despite Holmes’ charisma, the product she peddled never actually worked. Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou, who would go on to write a tell-all about Holmes and Theranos in his book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, was the first to expose the flaws in the Theranos company. In a nutshell, he concluded that the product Holmes was selling — a minimally-invasive blood test that could perform a variety of tests with minor amounts of blood on a machine she called The Edison — did not work and the company was using outside technology and other subterfuge to fake positive test results. What’s next? Carreyrou’s 2015 article started a windfall of exposés and investigations into Holmes and the company, which led to the speedy downfall of the “inventor’s” $9 billion-dollar baby. The company’s bloated value was later estimated to be closer to $800 million, according to Forbes. In March 2018, Holmes and her former company president Sunny Balwani were charged with massive fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Holmes and Balwani are charged with “raising more than $700 million from investors through an elaborate, years-long fraud in which they exaggerated or made false statements about the company’s technology, business, and financial performance,” read the release from the SEC. The pair were charged with nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in June 2018. Holmes could have faced 20 years in prison, but she and Theranos settled with the SEC, while Balwani is awaiting trial in San Jose. Holmes will pay a $500,000 fine as part of the settlement arrangement and be barred from serving as a director or officer of a public company for 10 years. She has not admitted or denied wrongdoing in settling. A movie adaptation of Holmes’s story is currently in the works with Adam McKay (Vice, The Big Short) attached to direct and Jennifer Lawrence to star. While Holmes has kept her relationship with her new fiancé relatively quiet, after Vanity Fair first reported on her engagment last month, reporter Nick Bilton went on to share screenshots of the happy couple from their private social media pages. “For everyone asking about Holmes’s social media. It’s private. But here are a few screenshots of her and her fiancé we found online. (I personally find it crazy that she’s being charged with 11 felony counts, thousands of people’s lives were harmed, and she’s as happy as can be. )” he wrote, alongside 4 photos of the couple. In one of the shots, a selfie which showed the pair kissing, Evans wrote, “Happy bday to my best friend. The last year has been the best I’ve ever had.” According to the Daily Mail, the pair also attended Burning Man last year and enjoy spending time with Holmes’ dog, Balto.<doc-sep>
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes is engaged, Vanity Fair's Nick Bilton reported. Her fiancé is William "Billy" Evans, a 27-year-old hotel heir, according to the Daily Mail. Evans has also worked for driverless-car startup Luminar Technologies. "She wears his M.I.T. signet ring on a necklace and the couple regularly post stories on Instagram professing their love for each other," Bilton wrote in a February Vanity Fair article. "She reliably looks 'chirpy' and 'chipper.'" Holmes and Evans have reportedly been living in a luxury apartment building in San Francisco while Holmes awaits trial. Holmes, 35, was once a Silicon Valley superstar and the youngest female self-made billionaire after founding the blood-testing startup Theranos. But when the flaws and inaccuracies of the company's technology were revealed, Theranos and Holmes were charged with "massive fraud." Holmes and Evans reportedly share a Siberian husky named Balto, according to Brides magazine. The pair has not publicly confirmed their relationship, but they were seen partying at Burning Man in 2018, according to the Daily Mail. Holmes arrives at court in California in January 2019. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images In 2014, Holmes told The New Yorker that she "doesn't date." But in 2019, it came out that the Theranos founder was previously in a relationship with the former president of Theranos, Sunny Balwani, Business Insider's Lydia Ramsey previously reported. The two kept their relationship a secret at the time, but both later confirmed it in deposition tapes reported by ABC News in January 2019. Holmes said in the tapes that the two were together "for a long period of time" but that they didn't disclose their relationship to investors. Holmes was previously in a relationship with the former president of Theranos. REUTERS/Mike Blake Their relationship was of interest to John Carreyrou, an investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal and the author of "Bad Blood." "It instantly became clear to me that she was lying to her board about this romantic relationship that she was having with the number two of the company, who by the way, was also about 20 years older," Carreyrou previously told Business Insider. Business Insider reached out to Evans for confirmation but did not immediately hear back.