Even after all the sleepless nights I spent prepping lessons, I still felt like a fraud teaching English as a former English as a Second Language student myself. In 2022, a study led by KPMG revealed that 75% of women in executive positions experience impostor syndrome, which is the belief that one does not deserve recognition for their work, fearing they will be exposed as a fraud.
Elizabeth Holmes, a 19-year-old Stanford dropout turned “world’s youngest self-made female billionaire,” never doubted herself. By the age of 30, Holmes had founded and become the CEO of Theranos, a biotech startup that claimed it could run extensive medical diagnoses using just a single drop of blood.
Holmes’ underdog story not only appealed to Silicon Valley investors, but inspired young, ambitious women to chase their dreams. In her TED Talk, “Theranos: Whistleblowing and Speaking Truth to Power,” former Theranos employee Erika Cheung recalled her admiration toward Holmes.
“When I heard Elizabeth Holmes had dropped out of Stanford at age 19 to start this company, it was a signal that it didn’t matter what your background was to make an impact in the world … this was one of the few anchors that got me through the day,” Cheung said.
However, the inspiring story of Holmes and Theranos collapsed after a bombshell report exposed the company for faking its blood-testing technology. Holmes was ultimately convicted on four federal fraud charges and later sentenced to more than 11 years in prison.
While the legal proceedings came to an end, the public’s fascination with the once-celebrated feminist icon turned corporate con-artist did not.
Holmes reshaped how society judges ambitious young women by flipping the script from “fake it until you make it,” into “gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss.”
One thing remains certain: Holmes’ story was never a feminist one.
In wanting to be taken seriously, Holmes borrowed the authority of a successful man. Holmes invented her entire persona by imitating Steve Jobs: black turtleneck, stoic expression and an intentionally deeper voice. As the Stanford Daily puts it: “The Girlboss paradigm [that Holmes represents] feigns progressivism while leaving all of the power structures that underlie Silicon Valley very much intact.”
Holmes did not overcome the impostor syndrome imposed upon women by a patriarchal society; she pushed it to an extreme. Instead of confronting insecurity, she masked it behind a suit and tie to gain a sense of empowerment.
The consequences? Real social cost for other women.
As women, if we wait around for the next promotion, we miss opportunities. If we appear too confident, we risk being exposed as frauds. The fall of Theranos reinforced the narrative that women don’t belong in male-dominated spaces, directly contradicting what decades of gender-equity advocacy have fought for.
For minority students who share the same gender as Holmes but not her whiteness, the damage is compounded.
The women remembered throughout history did not simply “girlboss” their way to success — they earned respect through rigor and contribution. The respective professional spheres of Coco Chanel, Zaha Hadid and Yayoi Kusama were never designed for them to succeed, yet they reshaped history by building something grounded in truth while remaining unapologetically themselves.
If we truly believe we will make it, then the question is no longer, “How convincingly we can fake it?” So, why try to fake it?
