C

| SIX |

Sunny

helsea Burkett was burning out. It was the late summer of
2009 and she was working long hours at a Palo Alto startup,
juggling what at a more established company would have been
five different roles. Not that she was averse to hard work. Like most
twenty-five-year-old Stanford graduates, striving was in her DNA. But
she yearned for a little inspiration and she wasn’t getting any from her
job: Doostang, her employer, was a career website for finance
professionals.

Chelsea had been one of Elizabeth’s best friends at Stanford. As
freshmen, they’d lived in adjacent dorms in Wilbur Hall, a big
residential complex on the eastern edge of campus, and had
immediately hit it off. Elizabeth wore a red-white-and-blue “Don’t
mess with Texas” T-shirt and a big smile the first time they met.
Chelsea found her sweet, smart, and fun.

Both were social and outgoing, with matching blue eyes. They did
their share of drinking and partying and pledged a sorority, partly as a
play for better housing. But, while Chelsea was a regular teenager still
trying to find herself, Elizabeth seemed to know exactly who she
wanted to be and what she wanted to do. When she returned to
campus with a patent she’d written at the beginning of sophomore
year, Chelsea was blown away.

The two young women had stayed in touch in the five years since
Elizabeth had dropped out of school to launch Theranos. They didn’t
see each other often, but they texted occasionally. During one of these