Patricia L. Herbold

Infobox US Cabinet official
name= Patricia L. Herbold


order= 14th
title= United States Ambassador to the Republic of Singapore
term_start= November 7, 2005
term_end=
president=
predecessor= Frank Lavin
successor=
birth_date= birth date and age|1940|9|24
birth_place= flagicon|USA Cincinnati, Ohio, United States
death_date=
death_place=
party=
religion=

Patricia L. Herbold (born 1940) is a chemist, former city mayor, and the United States Ambassador to the Republic of Singapore.

Early life

Ambassador Herbold was born in and grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. She received a B.A. in chemistry from Edgecliff College (now part of Xavier College) in Cincinnati in 1962, graduating cum laude. She later received a J.D. law degree from the Northern Kentucky University Salmon P. Chase College of Law in 1977, graduating second in her class.

Career

Chemistry

Ambassador Herbold initially worked for the federal government as an analytical chemist dealing with water pollution. She later served as Chief of the Data Processing Unit of the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration Lake Erie Program Office.

Law

After working in pollution control, Ambassador Herbold began a career as an attorney. She was a prosecutor from 1978 to 1979. Later, she was Associate Regional Counsel for PrudentialInsurance of America from 1979 to 1988. For two years, she was the General Counsel of Bank One. She was an attorney with the Cincinnati law firm of Taft, Stettinius & Hollister from 1990 to 1994.

Local government

Ambassador Herbold was a member of the City Council of Montgomery, Ohio from 1983 to 1986. She was mayor of the city beginning in 1986.

She moved to Washington state in 1995 when her husband, Robert Herbold became Executive VicePresident and Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft Corporation in 1994, where he worked until 2003.

Ambassador Herbold was appointed to be a Commissioner on the Washington State Gambling Commission from 1997 to 2000.

Ambassador to the Republic of Singapore

In 2005, Ambassador Herbold was appointed Ambassador of the United States of America to the Republic of Singapore. Soon after her appointment, she presented her credentials to President S. R. Nathan in a ceremony at Istana.

During her tenure as Ambassador, she presided when relations between the Republic of Singapore and the United States were among the closest between two countries. During the devastation of New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina, Singapore sent the largest military forces and aviation assets to participate in the rescue and rebuilding of the city. Singapore sent more rescue personnel and helicopters to the United States than any other country.

In addition to representing the United States, Ambassador Herbold also participates in local events. She regularly does voluntary work with children in Jurong.

Charitable efforts

Prior to being accredited to Singapore, Ambassador Herbold was a member of the President’s 21st Century Workforce Council, on the Board of St. Joseph Orphanage of Cincinnati, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Performing Arts Center Eastside in Bellevue, Washington.

Ambassador Herbold and her husband have supported cancer research. They gave a US$1.5 million(Singapore $2.5 million) gift to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center to establish the Herbold Computational Biology Program. [ [http://www.fhcrc.org/about/pubs/center_news/2005/nov3/sart4.html Center News - 11/3/05 - Bob and Pat Herbold give $1.5 million to new computational biology, bioinformatics program ] ]

Environmental conservation

Ambassador Herbold has worked with Long Live the Kings, a non-profit organization dedicated to the restoration of wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest.

Awards

Ambassador was the first recipient of the annual Scholar of Life Award of St. Joseph Orphanage

Family

Ambassador Herbold and her husband, Robert J. Herbold, have three grown children, Donna, Gregory, and Jim, who has ties to Singapore having previously worked for the Infocomm Development Agency.

References

Biography of Ambassador Herbold, Website of the U.S. Embassy in Singapore [http://singapore.usembassy.gov/bio.html]