For the past 11 years, Holmes, 30, has been laboring incessantly to build a company whose mission is to overhaul the nation's $60 billion blood taking and analysis business, literally one drop at a time. She owns 50 percent of it and is worth $4.5 billion, making her the youngest female and third-youngest billionaire on the recently released list of the 400 richest Americans from Forbes. But while Holmes is a billionaire on paper, nothing seems to interest her less. “What we’re about is the belief that access to affordable and real-time health information is a basic human right, and it’s a civil right.” 
 
 Harry Stine 
 
 Net worth: $2.6 billion. “Elizabeth may make a lot of money, but that is not her motivation.” Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State and Theranos board member 
 
 Theranos broke out of its decade of development with a quiet announcement last fall that it would open up its Wellness Centers in a Walgreens store here in Palo Alto as well as 20 other store locations in Phoenix. Holmes reads an e-mail from a diabetic woman who wrote the company to say her recent visit to a Theranos Wellness Center cost $34, "for (a wide variety of) tests that back in February cost my insurance company $876." Besides a deep medical advisory group, her board of directors includes former secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former Defense Secretary William Perry, and former senators Sam Nunn and Bill Frist.  , cost as little as $3.40 
 
 Some tests, such as 
 
 At 19-years-old, Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of her chemical engineering degree at Stanford University and used her tuition money to pursue a business idea she hoped would change the landscape of healthcare. (Photo: Martin E. Klimek, USA TODAY) 
 
 ABOUT ELIZABETH HOLMES, 30 
 
 What: Founder and CEO, Theranos, which aims to reinvent the way blood tests are taken and processed 
 
 Where: Palo Alto, Calif. 
 
 Are you afraid of needles? With a major fear of needles, she decided the current system for testing blood - implemented in the 1960s - was archaic, expensive, painful and slow. Elizabeth Holmes is proof that greatness is achieved by combining passion, innovation and the desire to better the lives of those around you.
– Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of college when she was 19; now, she's just 30. She's also the founder of a $9 billion company that's making medical treatment more accessible, and she's the youngest female billionaire in the US, reports Forbes. (She's the third-youngest billionaire overall.) Her company, Theranos, got its start when she dropped out of college in the belief that her tuition money could be used to make the world a better place, Elite Daily reports. Holmes focused on blood tests: "I have a big fear of needles. As do a lot of people. It's right up there with spiders and snakes," she told USA Today earlier this year. Many people are so repulsed by the testing process that they risk not receiving essential health information, Elite Daily notes; Holmes offers an alternative. She developed a testing system that requires only a single finger prick rather than the collection of multiple vials of blood. Not only is it painless, it's cheaper than the typical test: the Daily Mail reports a $30 cost. One drop of blood is enough for 30 different tests, Theranos says, and the procedure can be conducted at a pharmacy, with results arriving within four hours. The company is now partnering with Walgreens, and Holmes is hoping to get Theranos tests available in every store in the US—all 8,200 of them. (Another young female billionaire is in charge of In-N-Out Burger.)