Ellie Patterson is a Past President of the Rotary Club of Tucson, Arizona’s largest Rotary club. She joined Rotary in June of 2010 and immediately became an active member, serving as Club Secretary for three years. At the District level, Ellie served as Global Grants Subcommittee Chair for three years, was a PETS facilitator for one year and was Co-Chair of the Ride to End Polio in El Tour de Tucson for one year. Ellie is a Bequest Society Member at Level 7, a Major Donor, a multiple Paul Harris Fellow and Paul Harris Society Member. She is a past committee member of the RI Major Gifts Initiative for the Rotary Peace Centers and is a graduate of the Arizona Rotary Leadership Academy.

 

Ellie is a former Co-Owner of The Temp Connection, a locally-owned and managed staffing service that she and her business partners started over 26 years ago. Their company has been ranked as one of the top women-owned businesses in Tucson the last several years and the partners are well known for their volunteer activity and financial commitment to many non-profit organizations in the community they love. They have happily been involved at committee level, board level and in Chair positions.  Ellie and her husband, Tom, have three children, six grandchildren and a great grandchild. When time permits, they head to South America and find themselves off the beaten path, exploring the cultures and treasures of this continent.

 

Ellie graduated from the University of Washington and obtained her M.Ed. from Eastern Washington University. After graduate school she taught high school in Northern Idaho for several years and also worked as a guidance counselor. Ellie ended up biking with two friends from Canada to Mexico and shortly thereafter settled in Tucson in the early 80’s.  As a cyclist and strong supporter of  PolioPlus, Ellie welcomes all Rotarians and friends to ride with her, support a rider or volunteer in our Rotary District Ride to End Polio. “Cycling together is fun and the money raised brings us closer to eradicating polio worldwide” she responds when asked about the ride. The ride to date has generated close to 60 million dollars including the Gates Foundation match.

 

As governor in 2019-2020, Ellie’s goal is to support the membership growth efforts of all clubs “Grow Rotary” by embracing change and enhancing the club experience. She is using her car though instead of her bike when traveling to visit the 50 clubs in District 5500.

 

Please recall that we are piloting a Rotary jobs site for local Rotarian (and family), Rotoract and Interact members to find trusted employees and for Rotarians and their immediate family members to find jobs at companies where they can expect to be treated well and find opportunities for growth.  We currently have a couple of jobs posted, and would like to see the site garner more activity.

 

Please take a minute to visit the site. You can access it from our club website, http://tucsonrotary.org, clicking on the link at the top that says “RCOT Member Area.”  Thanks for your help.

 

Are you interested in promoting your business?  As a member of the Rotary Club of Tucson, you have the opportunity to advertise your business to our 250+ members of the club and also hundreds of visitors to our website by becoming a sponsor for just $99/per quarter.  With this sponsorship, we will post your logo which links to your website on our home page, be listed in the weekly bulletin and pages in Clubrunner and projected on the running slide show every week at our meetings. 

 

If you are interested in becoming a sponsor, please contact the Rotary office to find out how you can start promoting your business!