Clare Pattinson is 68 years old. She was born on September 13th, 1943. This is nearly 50 years ago. Since then, Clare has had a pretty exciting life, as you will see from this Wikipedia bio.
Early Life
Clare’s father was an Englishman named John Pattinson. He was a chartered accountant and an amateur ornithologist. Apparently, he was a bit of a smartass, as his daughter would later tell Stephen Fry on the Netflix show A Short History of Movies.
Her mother was Janet Parker. She was an only child and a great beauty. Sadly, Janet died of cancer when Clare was just 12 years old. After that, she was mostly raised by her father. According to Wikipedia, Clare’s father remarried twice more and had five more children with his third wife. That’s a total of 11 kids!
Clare went to high school in England, and then she moved to America to study at Cornell University. After graduating, she worked as a marketing executive for Ralph Lauren and then as a manager for I.M. Pei & Associates in New York City. She also started an entrepreneurship program called EDGE (Entrepreneurship through Design and Growth Environment) with a group of other business executives. Nowadays, she consults for Goldman Sachs and has a daughter, Poppy, who is a digital marketer. She also has granddaughters, Eliza and Alice, who are both at Vale University.
Career
After graduating college in 1968, Clare applied for jobs at HMOs (Health Maintenance Organizations). She wanted to stay in America, so she took a job at Prudential Blue Shield in Newark, New Jersey. In 1969, she became an enterprise account supervisor at C.J. Lang (now C.J. Parsons).
In 1970, she became a nurse, practicing in Manhattan. She also became a licensed practical nurse and started her own nursing department at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Hospital. Later that year, she decided to become a licensed social worker, completing her bachelor’s degree at Brooklyn College in Social Work in 1973. She then began working at the New York City Department of Social Services. Between 1974 and 1976, she worked as a community organizer and case manager. In 1978, she became an associate at the Bronx Legal Assistance Program, helping low-income households obtain legal services. In 1983, she founded the Legal Aid Society of New York and worked as its executive director until 1995.
In 2005, Clare founded The Clare Pattinson Group, a strategy consulting company. She currently serves as its CEO. The company’s clients include Starbucks, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America. In 2018, she became a member of the American Association for Advertising Agencies (4A’s) after spending more than 20 years working in and around advertising and marketing. She also is an avid birdwatcher and owns a significant collection of rare birds and bird eggs. Some of her hobbies include travelling, reading, and collecting antiques.
Personal Life
Clare has been married three times. She has two children, a daughter, Poppy, and a son, Jeremy. She also has a grandchild, Noah, from her marriage to Poppy’s father, David Warburton. She was previously married to Charles Pattinson. Her third husband, Richard Leach, died of cancer in 2014. Today, she lives in New York City. She also spends a lot of time in Doha, Qatar, where her office is located.
In 2019, the New York Times named her one of the 30 most powerful women in New York City (behind only Cheryl Tanzer and Deborah Levin of Cheryl P. Tanzer & Associates). In 2018, she was named one of the 10 most influential urban design professionals by Architecture Monthly. In 2017, she was selected as one of the 30 most fascinating people in New York City by the New York Times. The following year, she was included on Business Insider’s list of the “World’s Top 100 Most Influential Businesswomen.”
Clare was born in September 1943 and will be 74 years old in September 2023. Since then, she has had a pretty exciting life, as you will see from this bio.