I'm Elise Hugh. This is TED Talks Daily. It feels like ancient history now, but the scandal

surrounding Elizabeth Holmes and her startup, Theranos, was one of the biggest business frauds in Silicon Valley history.

Entrepreneur Erica Chung blew the whistle on the company. In her talk from TEDx Berkeley in 2020,

she takes us on her journey from stressed college student to how she trusted her gut and spoke

truth to power. But it asks a bigger question for all of us. How do we make it easier to speak

up about problems in our workplaces and institutions?

So I had graduated seven years ago from Berkeley with a dual degree in molecular and cell biology

and linguistics. And I had gone to a career fair here on campus where I'd gotten an interview

with a startup called Theranos.

And at the time, there wasn't really that much information about the company, but the little

that was there was really impressive. Essentially, what the company was doing was creating a medical

device where you would be able to run your entire blood panel on a

finger stick of blood. So you wouldn't have to get a big needle stuck in your harm in order to get

your blood test done. So this was interesting not only because it was less painful, but also

it could potentially open the door to predictive diagnostics.

If you had a device that allowed for more frequent and continuous diagnosis,

potentially you could diagnose disease before someone got sick.

And this was confirmed in an interview that the founder, Elizabeth Holmes, had said

in the Wall Street Journal, you know, the reality within our healthcare system today is that when

someone you care about gets really sick, by the time you found out, it's too late to do anything

about it, and it's heartbreaking. This was a moonshot that I really wanted to be a part of,

and I really wanted to help build.

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