Martine Rothblatt, CEO of United Therapeutics

They say rare opportunities can arise from a great crisis, as long as we can remain standing of course.  This is the point when ideas that are difficult to translate to reality are dismissed by the all too realistic, but preserved by the visionary.

In any situation he is in, somebody with vision can go beyond present circumstances and appreciate opportunities where no one else can see them. In the same way, great character is shown by those who can endure the crisis and turn it into fuel for the search of a solution, no matter how uphill it may seem at the time.

Among many that have faced such situations with success there is one particular case that has drawn attention in recent times. Before becoming well known as the trans humanist CEO she is now, Martine Rothblatt started out very differently, more specifically, she was hitchhiking playing gigs in hotels with her guitar to support herself in the Seychelles, but a visit to a local NASA satellite facility inspired her to quickly go back home and enroll in UCLA as a communications engineer, later to become a telecommunications lawyer.

She started Sirius Satellite Radio and it went public on 1993, however, short after this her daughter Jenesis developed a rather uncommon disease known as pulmonary arterial hypertension. She had to leave Sirius and so went on looking for a cure for at the time the best therapy had to be injected constantly via IV with a portable pump and the most afflicted could die within two years.

This led her to start her own biotech firm called United Therapeutics, considered to be worth close to $ 4.5 B with five treatments on the market that have been approved by the FDA at the moment, and is working still on experiments with genetic modification to create the ultimate cure for her daughter, that is, a lung transplant that the body doesn’t reject.

Martine was born Martin and underwent surgery in 1994. As the most well known transgender in a CEO position and the highest paid woman CEO at the moment, she has gained a lot of attention recently for her views on transhumanism, the idea that eventually human beings will be able to transcend physical barriers thanks to technology and upload their consciousness to artificial structures such as computers.

However strange Martine’s ideas may sound, it is unquestionable that this drive has yielded amazing results. The most recently famous is her robot Bina48, created using cognitive technology and aesthetically made to resemble her wife, the original Bina at present age.

This is part of an even bigger effort to push for ways to upload human minds for preservation and cloning using artificial intelligence. Although doubted by many, Martine seems to be comfortable with uphills in general now and thrives in the face of difficult circumstances with confidence in where she’s going.

Whether we agree with her on her efforts or not, she remains an inspiration for those who consider their enterprises too unreal or difficult to achieve due to circumstances.