Meet the highest paid CEO in America who used to be a man

Futurist, pharma tycoon, satellite entrepreneur, philosopher, Martine Rothblatt, the highest-paid female executive in America, was born male. Martine (born Martin) underwent a sex change at age 40. She is head of United Therapeutics and earned $38 million last year.

Dr. Rothblatt founded United Therapeutics in 1996 and has served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer since its inception. Prior to United Therapeutics, she founded and served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sirius XM Satellite Radio. She is a co-inventor on three of our patents pertaining to treprostinil. She has served as a United Therapeutics director since 1996.

The New York Times has published the Equliar annual list of the 200 highest paid chief executives in the United States, and the top-paid female executive has only identified as female for the last 20 years of her life.

She founded the company after her child was diagnosed with a rare illness, pulmonary arterial hypertension, which can restrict bloodflow to the lungs and is life-threatening.

The company has created a drug, Orenitram, for the disease, and now is a publicly traded company that had a market capitalization of $4.6 billion at the time of publication on June 10, 2014. Stock prices more than doubled after the drug got approval from the US Food and Drug Administration.

Most of Rothblatt’s compensation last year is a result of her decision to unload 9,066 company shares on Thursday June 5. The final transaction was valued at $874,506.36. After the sale, the CEO directly owns only 140 shares in the company, valued at around $13,000. A lawyer by training and a graduate of UCLA, Rothblatt is aged 59. Below is Forbes breakdown of her earning in 2013.

United Therapeutics Corp

Compensation for 2013

Salary	$992,678
All other compensation	$25,344
Option awards	$36,097,326
Non-equity incentive plan compensation	$1,102,907
Total Compensation	$38,218,255

Options Exercised for 2013

Number of securities underlying options exercisable	398,658
Shares acquired on exercise	99,692

Stock Ownership for 2014                                                                                              140