Patricia L. Herbold

Patricia "Pat" Herbold was born in 1940 in Cincinnati, Ohio. She was the second of five children, four girls and one boy. All attended Catholic grammar school, and their mother stayed home to care for the household. In trying to recollect her early childhood, Herbold admits that there are gaps, especially about her father. She thinks he worked at a local automobile club for a while and at some point managed a gas station. Eventually, he owned a grocery store near her family's home in Oakley, a suburb of Cincinnati.

Herbold has very few memories of her father ever being home. "We children didn't know at the time that my father was addicted to gambling," she says. "We later learned that he was rarely home because he was gambling at the casinos in northern Kentucky, and he got deeply into debt."

Her mother was often unable to pay the bills. "I remember that on several occasions, we ate dinner by candlelight because our electricity had been turned off. There was a little mom-and-pop grocery store nearby that would let you run a tab. When Mom didn't have any money, and the grocer didn't want to extend her any more credit, she'd send me to the store to pick up a few groceries, hoping that the owners would feel sorry for this skinny little girl."

In 1948, while Herbold was in second grade, her father faked his own kidnapping, which garnered a lot of media attention in the local newspapers. "I guess he was trying to get away from those to whom he owed money. He eventually surfaced in Florida," she says.

Following her father's abandonment of the family, Herbold's mother struggled to support her children. "Except for what little financial help my maternal grandparents could muster, my mother had no other income," she says, noting that her father had bought a diner in Florida with help from his mother. "Mom agreed to go to Florida with the children to see if reconciliation was possible. She sold our home in Oakley to pay for our car trip to Florida."

Once they arrived, her mother paid off the husband's debts with what was left from the sale of the house. Less than a year later, Herbold's father lost the diner. There was no money left and no income. Her mother decided the marriage was hopeless. Herbold's maternal grandfather scraped together the money for six plane tickets so they could return to Cincinnati.

"I never saw my father again," Herbold says. "My mother had no job and no home for all of us, so she went to Catholic charities and made arrangements for the five of us to be placed in St. Joseph Orphanage. Mom went to secretarial school and filed for divorce."

Herbold was in the middle of fifth grade when she entered the orphanage. "It was a more regimented life than I was used to. Boys and girls were on opposite sides of the building, and each side was divided by grades," she recalls. "Kindergarteners were in the '˜baby' division, the junior division was first through fourth grade, and the senior division for those in the fifth through eighth grade. My baby brother was in kindergarten, and I rarely saw him. My two younger sisters were in the junior division and became more dependent on each other. They remain close to this day. My older sister and I were in the senior division and over time made separate friends within our grade level. There were some tough kids in the orphanage, and I learned quickly to keep my head down and stay out of trouble."

Herbold's world had been turned upside down, but she accepted the circumstances and did her best to adapt. The orphanage had laundry and kitchen staff members, but routine cleaning and ironing duties were assigned to the children. Once a week after school, the senior girls would iron all the laundered dresses. "I learned quickly which dresses were easy to iron and which ones weren't," she says. "I came up with a routine that made ironing day easier. I would eat lunch quickly, run to the laundry, pick out the easy dresses, spray and roll them up, put them on my ironing board, and then go back to school. As soon as school was over, I'd run back to the laundry to iron the dresses. I always finished before everyone else, because my items were ready to go, and they were the easiest to iron."

During the summer, the older girls had cooking and sewing lessons, and all the children had swimming lessons. Herbold got into the routine of living in the orphanage. She discovered that the more responsible jobs went to the most trustworthy girls. She also learned that the harder she worked and the better she did with her chores, the more benefits she received. "I also learned that I was a survivor," she says. "I knew that no matter what life threw at me, I would somehow handle it."

Once a month was visiting Sunday, and Herbold's mother, who was working as a secretary and living with her parents, faithfully came to visit her children. She would bring cookies, and they would try to make the most of their time together, but Herbold was always sad when her mother left.

Herbold and her older sister went home upon graduating from the eighth grade. "My grandfather died the summer that I went home, and my grandmother was in a nursing home, so my grandmother deeded the house to my mother," she says. "When my next younger sister graduated from the eighth grade, the other two also came home."

Herbold continued to study hard and get good grades in high school as a result of the strong work ethic she had learned at the orphanage. She became president of the National Honor Society and played varsity volleyball and basketball. However, college seemed financially unattainable.

Herbold had decided to become a nun after her high school graduation. But during her senior year, a sign-up sheet for a scholarship test for Cincinnati's Edgecliff College was being passed around. "My friend encouraged me to take the test, which was on a Saturday," Herbold says. "She convinced me it would be an excuse to go to our favorite hamburger place afterward. The Sunday after the test, my mother received a call and, with tears in her eyes, told me that I had won a full scholarship to Edgecliff. As it turned out, my friend who talked me into taking the test is the one who became a nun! God works in mysterious ways."

Edgecliff was an all-women's Catholic college that later merged with Xavier University in Cincinnati. Herbold's tuition was covered, and she continued to live at home, but she needed an on-campus job to pay for books and clothes. She went to work in the chemistry department, which influenced her to take freshman chemistry classes. In 1962, she graduated cum laude with a major in chemistry and a minor in biology.

Herbold's first job out of college was in the federal government's water pollution control office at Taft Sanitary Engineering Center in Cincinnati. She worked there as a chemist until her marriage to Robert "Bob" Herbold in 1966. Motherhood quickly ensued, and by 1973, she had three children. Herbold had stayed home with her children, but her passion for learning took hold. "I wanted more mental stimulation," she says. "I thought about going to medical school, but there wasn't an evening program, and I wanted to be home during the day with the children. Salmon P. Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University had an evening program, so I took the LSAT and started law school in 1973."

Herbold went to law school two evenings and Saturday mornings each week for four years. After she received her law degree in 1977, graduating second in her class, she worked part time for the county prosecutor's office, which allowed her to be with her children after they came home from school. She served as assistant, then associate, regional counsel for Prudential Insurance of America from 1979 to 1988; as vice president and general counsel of Bank One Dayton from 1988 to 1990; and as an attorney with the Cincinnati law firm of Taft, Stettinius & Hollister from 1990 to 1994. Herbold also won election to the city council of Montgomery, Ohio, and served as mayor in 1985 and 1986.

In 1994, after 26 years at Procter & Gamble and having risen to the position of senior vice president of marketing, Bob Herbold became chief operating officer at Microsoft. By then, the two were empty-nesters and made the move to Bellevue, Washington. Herbold quickly began looking for opportunities in her new community. She chaired the Downtown Bellevue Tomorrow Task Force, which made recommendations for developing more housing and commercial properties and for improving traffic patterns and pedestrian-friendly access in the city center. This experience made Herbold familiar with local, state and federal legislators.

From 2002 to 2004, Herbold was chairman of the King County Republican Party. In 2005, President George W. Bush appointed her as U.S. ambassador to Singapore. "I was familiar with the country," she says. "Bob and I visited one of our sons who lived and worked there for two years, and I also went there with Bob on a business trip. As ambassador, I lived there full time for three years, and Bob was there every other month."

In 2006, Herbold hosted President Bush and First Lady Laura during their visit to Singapore. "It was the greatest honor of my life to be the president's personal representative in another country, and Singapore was a wonderful post," she says. "I was very impressed with the people of Singapore, the intelligence of its leaders, and all they have accomplished in a short amount of time."

Herbold defines success as any endeavor that makes her feel productive, fulfilled, and happy. In her commencement speech at Northern Kentucky University in 2008, her advice to the college graduates was this: "Recognize the fact that we now live in a global society. You can no longer stay in your hometown for the rest of your life and be as successful as you might have been generations ago. Don't be wedded to the status quo when you have options that will open doors to new and exciting experiences. There is an exciting world out there, and you shouldn't be afraid to look at jobs that take you to foreign countries. Become a part of the global picture, and be successful, whatever you determine success to be."

Herbold and her husband launched the Herbold Foundation in 2002, and she has served as vice president and secretary. The foundation is used primarily to award scholarships to students majoring in science, technology, math, or engineering. Herbold and her husband also funded the Herbold Computational Biology Program at Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. She is a former member of the President's 21st Century Workforce Council and has served on the boards of St. Joseph Orphanage of Cincinnati, Seattle Art Museum, Washington Policy Center, and Performing Arts Center Eastside in Bellevue.

After retiring, Herbold served on a number of nonprofit boards, including the Reagan Ranch; the national finance committee of the Bush Foundation, which raised money for the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas; and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a conservative nonprofit group that is in Wilmington, Delaware, and that teaches free-market principles.

"My philosophy really hasn't changed since I was a young girl," she says. "I have always believed in working hard at whatever I undertake. At some point in my life, I realized that, for me, education is a lifelong process. I try to learn something new every day. Education can be the ticket to a better life and unexpected opportunities, as it was for me."

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