Martine Aliana Rothblatt who is born on October 10, 1954, is an American lawyer, author, and entrepreneur. She graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with J.D. and M.B.A. degrees in 1981, then began to work in Washington, D.C., first in the field of communications satellite law, and eventually in life sciences projects like the Human Genome Project.
She is the founder and chairwoman of the board of United Therapeutics. She was also the CEO of GeoStar and the creator of SiriusXM Satellite Radio. She was the top top-earning in the biopharmaceutical industry in 2018.
Martine Rothblatt’s Net Worth is $380 Million
Martine Rothblatt started working in Washington, D.C. in communication satellite law before working on life science projects such as the Human Genome Project.
She represented the television industry before the Federal Communications Commission while working at Covington & Burling. Rothblatt was retained by NASA to obtain FCC approval for the IEEE c-band system as well as by the National Academy of Science’s Committee on Radio Frequencies.
She led the International Bar Association’s biopolitical project developing a draft Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights for the United Nations. She created the PPH Cure Foundation and founded the medical biotechnology company United Therapeutics.
She earned her Ph.D. in medical ethics. Martine was the highest-paid female CEO in the United States in 2013 when she earned $38 million. Rothblatt is also the creator of GeoStar and Sirius Radio.
She has also authored six books, they are mostly about her journey as a transgender such as The Apartheid of Sex which was published in 1995, From Transgender to Transhuman: A Manifesto on the Freedom of Form in 2011, etc.
Martine Rothblatt is the highest-paid female executive in the United States. In 2015, Forbes’ ranked her at number 45 as part of the inaugural list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women. Her company, United Therapeutics Corp., supports products that attend to America’s unmet medical needs.
How Martine Rothblatt came up with the medicine for Pulmonary Hypertension
In 1982, Rothblatt married Bina Aspen, a realtor from Compton, California. Martine Rothblatt and Aspen each had a child from a previous relationship and legally adopted each other’s children; they went on to have two more children together.
In 1994, at age 40, she came out as transgender and changed her name to Martine Aliana Rothblatt. She has since become a vocal advocate for transgender rights. When in 2014, Martine Rothblatt’s company hit it big and was enjoying its high.
But Martine Rothblatt’s youngest daughter was suddenly diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension.
“There were no medicines approved. If nothing was done, she was going to die. So I just stopped what I was doing and taught myself biology and pharmaceutical stuff until finally, I found a potential chemical that could be a medicine.”
That medicine, Orenitram (which is Martinez), spelled backward was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2013 in pill form to treat the once hopeless malady, and together with three other drugs now brings in $1.3 billion a year. While far from being a Fortune 500 company, United Therapeutics remains a favorite of investors.
Martine Rothblatt herself earned $15.5 million in 2016 and is now the sole CEO.
