Who Got Rich This Week: Dr. Myron Wentz, Microbiologist and Founder of USANA Health Sciences

Dr. Myron Wentz was born in a small, rural town in North Dakota in 1940. At 17, he lost his father to heart disease — a traumatic event that would catalyze a career in science and medicine. “It was one of the most traumatic events in my life…I think it put a mark on me that I was denied a father at a young age,” Wentz recounts on his personal website. Wentz went on to get his Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology at the University of Utah, and in the mid-1970s he founded Gull Laboratories, a virus diagnostics company he sold in 1994 for $22 million.
Today he’s the chairman and founder of USANA Health Sciences, a multilevel marketing manufacturer of supplements and health products that competes with the likes of Herbalife , Nu Skin Enterprises and privately held Amway . USANA stock surged 33% this past week after third-quarter earnings beat analyst expectations, with sales increasing 10.5% over the previous year to $191 million and net income improving 16.4% to $19.5 million.
Wentz, who started the company in 1992 (he spun it off from Gull Laboratories less than a year later), owns 51% of its stock, and saw his shares jump in value by $185 million, increasing from $559 million to $744 million. He also owns vested stock options worth about $30 million.
Outside of his entrepreneurial efforts, Wentz is also preoccupied with improving the health of people in developing nations. In 2005, he opened a medical center in Uganda that’s aimed at preventing diseases like HIV, malaria and intestinal viruses. Four years later he opened a similar medical center in Cambodia and another in Malawi in 2011.