Theranos Is Getting Rid of High-Profile Board Members Including Henry Kissinger and George Shultz
In 2017, the company said, the board of counselors will be retired.
By Lydia Ramsey •
This story originally appeared on Business Insider
Theranos is making a huge change to its leadership.
In 2017, the company said, the board of counselors will be retired. The board of counselors consisted mostly of former directors with strong government connections but little scientific experience, such as Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, and it served as an advisory board to the company's founder, Elizabeth Holmes.
James Mattis, a retired Marine general who is President-elect Donald Trump's pick for secretary of defense, will stay on the company's board of directors.
Theranos also announced that Riley Bechtel, who sat on the board of directors, would also be departing immediately, citing health issues. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Bechtel had invested in Theranos, which hadn't been publicly disclosed.
When the blood-testing company was first facing major criticism over its technology in October 2015, one of the problems cited was that its board of directors included few professionals with science credentials. To counter that, Theranos moved many of those members onto a board of counselors and later made a scientific and medical advisory board.
The members of the board of counselors are among some of the highest-profile names supporting Theranos and Holmes, who is the company's CEO.
Among those who will no longer be with the company:
- Henry A. Kissinger -- former U.S. secretary of state
- William H. Frist -- heart and lung transplant surgeon and former U.S. senator
- Sam Nunn -- former U.S. senator who served as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
- William J. Perry -- former U.S. secretary of defense
- George P. Shultz -- former U.S. secretary of state
- Gary Roughead -- retired U.S. Navy admiral
Here's Theranos' current board of directors, including Daniel Warmenhoven, who will be replacing Bechtel.
- Elizabeth Holmes -- CEO and chairman of the board of Theranos
- James N. Mattis -- retired U.S. Marine Corps general and President-elect Donald Trump's pick for secretary of defense
- David Boies -- lawyer and chairman of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, who until November, The Journal reports, Theranos had used for legal work as well
- Daniel Warmenhoven -- former CEO at NetApp
- William H. Foege -- former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Richard Kovacevich -- former CEO of Wells Fargo
- Fabrizio Bonanni -- former executive vice president at the biopharmaceutical company Amgen
