Martine Rothblatt

Rothblatt left the company she founded, SiriusXM, in the early ’90s to start United Therapeutics in a bid to cure her daughter Jenesis’ pulmonary hypertension. Today Jenesis is thriving and the company’s sales are hitting record highs, led by the pulmonary arterial hypertension drug Tyvaso. A transgender rights activist, Rothblatt also led United’s transformation into a public benefit corporation, making it the first publicly traded pharmaceutical company to make the switch. Now she’s pushing to reduce the shortage of organs for people in need of transplants. In 2022, United orchestrated the first transplant of a gene-edited pig heart into a human, and it’s also experimenting with 3D-printed replacement organs.