Judy Faulkner ~ Leadership At It's Highest
She’s worth 7.8 billion dollars.
She has never cashed out a single share.
And she’s giving 99 percent of it away.
Her name is Judy Faulkner, and her story is not about wealth. It’s about restraint, responsibility, and a kind of leadership that has become almost unimaginable in modern tech culture.
When Judy Faulkner once asked her children what they needed most from her, they answered honestly. Food. Money. Security. The things everyone thinks are essential.
She shook her head.
“No,” she said. “You need roots and wings.”
Roots to ground you.
Wings to lift you.
Everything else, she believed, was just details.
That philosophy shaped a life that quietly rewrote what power can look like.
Judy Faulkner didn’t start with privilege or billions. She started in a basement in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1979, with 70,000 dollars borrowed from friends and family, two part time employees, and a computer she programmed herself, she launched a company with a radical idea.
Medical information should follow the patient.
At the time, healthcare records were fragmented, locked in filing cabinets, scattered across incompatible systems. Doctors treated patients without knowing their full histories. Preventable mistakes were common. Lives were lost in the gaps.
One loss made the mission personal.
Her husband, a pediatrician, had treated a young girl for years. When the family moved just 75 miles away, her records didn’t follow her. When she became critically ill, the new doctors didn’t have the information they needed. By the time they pieced together what they could, it was too late.
The child died.
The next day, Judy went back to the basement and doubled down.
This would not happen again. Not if she could help it.
What grew out of that basement became Epic Systems, now one of the most powerful healthcare technology companies in the world. Epic holds the medical records of more than 325 million patients. Roughly half of all hospital beds in the United States rely on its systems. The company generates billions in annual revenue.
And Judy Faulkner never sold.
She never took venture capital. Never went public. Never bowed to quarterly earnings pressure. She kept Epic private so patients would never be secondary to profit.
“Why be owned by people whose primary interest is return on equity?” she asked.
While other tech founders chased exits, IPOs, and yachts, Judy kept writing strategy, thinking long term, and building systems meant to last decades, not quarters. At 82 years old, she still goes to work every day at Epic’s 1,670 acre campus, a place known for its whimsical, storybook inspired buildings. One executive once described her as a mix between Bill Gates and Willy Wonka.
But the real difference came after the billions were already there.
In 2015, Judy signed the Giving Pledge, committing to give away the majority of her wealth. Then she went further.
She pledged 99 percent.
Not someday.
Not after death.
During her lifetime.
In 2019, she and her husband launched the Roots and Wings Foundation, named after that conversation with her children years earlier. The foundation focuses on what she believes every human deserves.
Roots: food, shelter, healthcare, education.
Wings: opportunity, dignity, the chance to rise.
In 2020, the foundation gave 15 million dollars to over 100 organizations. By 2024, that number had grown to 67 million dollars to more than 300 nonprofits. Her goal is 100 million dollars a year by 2027.
She is selling her Epic shares back to the company and giving every dollar away.
Of the hundreds of billionaires who have promised to give, only a small fraction actually do so in meaningful ways while they are alive.
Judy Faulkner is one of them.
She has never taken personal profit from her shares. Every dollar beyond her salary is going back into the world. Into healthcare access. Education. Community stability. Families who need roots before they can ever dream of wings.
In an era where wealth often becomes spectacle, Judy chose stewardship.
She built a company that quietly improves care for hundreds of millions of people. She protected it from the pressures that hollow out purpose. And when the wealth came, she treated it not as a trophy, but as a responsibility.
Her legacy will not be rockets launched or islands purchased.
It will be measured in lives saved because records were there when doctors needed them. In children educated because someone believed access matters. In families stabilized because help arrived before collapse.
She taught her children they needed roots and wings.
Now she’s spending her fortune making sure millions of others can have both.
Not because she has to.
But because she believes that wealth, when held without ego, can become something rare.
A tool for care.
A foundation for dignity.
A quiet force that lifts others without asking to be applauded.
That is not just success.
That is leadership at its highest form.
If this work matters to you and you would like to support the time, research, and care devoted to preserving and sharing women’s history, you are welcome to support it through Buy Me a Coffee. Every contribution helps ensure these stories remain alive, accessible, and told with respect, accuracy, and heart.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you for remembering.
And thank you for honoring the women who came before us, and the living legacy they continue to shape.
3
1 comment
Judy Faulkner ~ Leadership At It's Highest
powered by
skool.com/ageless-wisdom-grandma-grady-5485
Where Faith & Grace Lead, Wisdom Grows & Financial Freedom Flows for all Souls and Hearts. 💕
Suggested communities
Powered by