Elizabeth Holmes’ baritone was mocked for years. But research shows CEOs with deeper voices run bigger companies and earn $187,000 more
Source: Fortune ·
As You Can See Everything puts Holmes back in the spotlight, studies of CEOs and voters show why a low register can open doors, and why that bias says nothing about who deserves to lead.
From the source
Elizabeth Holmes’s voice—and who, metaphorically, controls it—is one mystery among many in A24’s buzzy documentary You Can See Everything. Her partner, Billy Evans, acknowledges in the film that he runs her X account. A vocal quirk the film doesn’t address, at least not directly, is Holmes’s famously low register. That register was on full display at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in 2014, months after Holmes landed on the cover of Fortune and while she still had credibility as Theranos’s founder. The author of that cover story would later write about how Theranos misled him. Her company’s science was eventually debunked, starting with John Carreyrou’s reporting in the Wall Street Journal. The science of a low pitch is a separate question: How much credibility did that baritone actually lend her? The benefits of being a baritone Some of the most rigorous evidence on voice and corporate success comes from a 2013 study of 792 male CEOs of public companies, published in Evolution…