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Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and CEO of beset blood analysis startup Theranos, is no longer mentioned on the Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship (PAGE) website.
Holmes announced she had joined the Obama administration’s entrepreneurial PAGE program, which notably includes AOL CEO Steve Case, Airbnb founder Brian Chesky and Stripe’s Patrick Collison, in March of last year. However, the site no longer lists her or shows her photo among these leaders.
First reported in Fortune, Theranos confirmed Holmes has quietly stepped down from her position as a presidential role model for American entrepreneurs and will instead “spend all her time focused on one thing, and that is Theranos and its needs, especially as the company focuses on sharing its technologies with the scientific community,” the company said.
It’s certainly a time for the company to get focused. Theranos’ founder has suffered a series of setbacks over the past year, including several scathing Wall Street Journal articles questioning the technology, misleading results, dramatic plummet in valuation, government inquiries and the fact that Holmes was recently banned from operating any of her labs.
Despite all that, Holmes presented at the American Association of Clinical Chemistry (AACC) conference in Philadelphia yesterday what was implied to be a first glimpse into the technology her startup has been working on all this time. However, the audience got what many have called a “bait and switch” when Holmes instead showcased a new tabletop “miniLab” and Zika detection device. It’s still unclear if any of the new products presented were part of the old “Edison” technology as answers to audience questions remained vague.Theranos maintains Holmes will remain in a leadership role at her company, but the PAGE program, which relies on ambassadors’ support and encourages them to “inspire” entrepreneurship within their community, will no longer be something in which Holmes participates.
