Wisconsin’s self-made female billionaire

In the late 1960s, UW-Madison began offering what might’ve been the world’s first course on computers in medicine. Curious, a young female graduate student named Judith Faulkner signed up.

Fifty years later, her IT company Epic stores patient data for nearly 250 million people worldwide. Though valued at ~$3 billion, Faulkner drives herself to work in an aging station wagon, parking in an uncovered spot by her only perceptible indulgence: Epic’s massive Verona campus. She accepts interviews on rare occasions.

Faulkner signed the Giving Pledge in 2015, agreeing to eventually give her 43 percent stake in Epic to charity.

– The 100 Companies staff