Kathryn Childers, a member of the first group of female U.S. Secret Service Agents, will be speaking at the Women’s Fund annual Celebrate Women! Luncheon on Wednesday, August 22 at Stone Harbor Resort.
Like many young women in the early 1960s, Kathryn Childers received her degree in elementary education and expected to find a husband and quietly settle down. Instead, she found the beginning of a phenomenal life and numerous careers that were anything but subdued.
While working in Washington D.C., Childers was among the first group of five females recruited into the United States Secret Service. She spent the next several years protecting foreign dignitaries as well as Caroline and John Kennedy Jr., traveling with Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis. She was also assigned to investigate counterfeiting and threats again the President.
“I’ve gotten to do all these interesting things because I never turned down an opportunity,” Childers says.
Childers has been a trailblazer throughout her life. As a teenager, she competed on the boys’ tennis team, was the NRA’s top-ranked women’s .22 gauge rifle national champion at age 16, and one of the first women on the national ski patrol team.
“I was never intimidated by the boys,” Childers says. After becoming a Secret Service agent at age 20, Childers felt she had to be as good or better than the men to be accepted. She soon learned that, “My sense of humor was better than being better.”
After the Secret Service, Childers continued to write ever more impressive chapters of her life story. Her accomplishments include 18 years as a veteran broadcast journalist and producer. She is an award-winning community advocate who founded an organization that has provided more than 13,000 free mammograms to women in need. Childers is also an author and founder of her own publishing company which created and sold more than 100,000 books based on a fluke Christmas Eve snowstorm that hit the Gulf Coast of Texas in 2004.
Today, Childers is a nationally sought after speaker to organizations of all sizes as she shares her personal mantra of “Do It Scared.” It was crafted after years of embracing - and more importantly seizing - unique and unexpected opportunities. Childers also shares nuggets of advice garnered during her amazing careers, challenging people of all ages to fill their own “back pack” of experiences.
Tickets to this year’s Celebrate Women! Luncheon are $40 ($25 of which is tax deductible as a charitable gift).
The Celebrate Women! Luncheon has sold out in each of its first years. For the opportunity to hear Childers speak, and to support women and girls in Door County, call the Door County Community Foundation at (920) 746-1786 or visit the Women’s Fund website http://www.womensfunddoorcounty.org.
The Women’s Fund of Door County is a component fund of the Door County Community Foundation, Inc.
