By Kevin Bouffard
The Ledger

Eileen Burgess Holden

Born: Oct. 8, 1955.

Birthplace: Cortlandt Manor, N.Y.

Age: 51.

Family: Husband, Al; no children.

Job: President, Polk Community College. Began Feb. 1, 2006, under a three-year contract.

Annual salary: $182,500.

Residence: Winter Haven.

Education: 1977, bachelor's degree in secondary education, Utica College of Syracuse University; 1983, master's degree in teaching disciplines (English and reading), University of Houston; 1997, doctorate in higher education administration, Nova Southeastern University.

Job Experience: 2001-06, vice president for academic affairs and technical education, Broward Community College; 1997-2001, dean for academic affairs, Palm Beach Community College; 1991-97, division chair for central campus, Palm Beach Community College; 1987-91, program manager for central campus, Palm Beach Community College; 1986-87, instructor and head of Adult Education Department, Lummi Community College, Bellingham, Wash.; 1984-86, instructor of arts and humanities, Houston (Texas) Community College.

Car: 2003 Nissan Maxima.

Favorite food: Pizza.

Favorite drink: Sprite Zero.

Pet peeve: Pretentious people.

Last book read: "Nature Girl" by Carl Hiaasen.

Last movie seen: "Happy Feet" on DVD.

Person you most admire: My parents.

Bad habit: Constantly checking my Blackberry.

Biggest accomplishment: "I recently had a great sense of accomplishment when I worked with 30 other women to build a house for Habitat for Humanity in Lakeland. It was a humbling and rewarding experience to be a part of this collaborative process - arriving in the morning and seeing nothing but a concrete slab and then working as a team to raise the walls, hammer nails and make a home for a very deserving family."

LAKELAND

Eileen Holden recalls her first-grade teacher, Sister Justine, got so exasperated with her classroom hyperactivity that she had the young girl drag her desk to the hallway.

"I probably was fidgeting too much," said Holden.

But the incident didn't dull her enthusiasm for education or her seemingly boundless energy.

"She is a rocket full of energy with 10-point sights," said Ernie Pinner, president and chief executive officer at CenterState Bank and a member of the Polk Community College board that chose Holden as its new president in December 2005.

Ask colleagues, friends and family to describe Holden, and "energetic" is one of the first words out of their mouths.

"She has a lot of energy. She's always moving," said her older sister, Peggy Lenihan, of Pleasantville, N.Y.

Others who have worked with her over the years said she demands a team spirit among all her subordinates. For those who don't want to be part of the team, Holden suggests they should work elsewhere, even helping some find another job, they said.

That goes back to her teenage years, when Holden was a reliable, though not spectacular, pitcher and center fielder on her school's softball team, she said.

"My energy comes from surrounding myself with talented people," Holden said. "My approach is always a team approach."

Another characteristic trait, Lenihan said, also surfaced early in her sister's life: Once Holden makes a decision, she relentlessly focuses on that goal until she succeeds.

For example, Holden set her sights on a teaching career at about age 8, said Lenihan, her first "student." Holden turned their bedroom into a classroom, where she instructed Lenihan and an assortment of stuffed animals.

"Then I would leave, and she would end up talking to the stuffed animals," she said.

Holden, 51, said she didn't allow anything to deter her.

"I didn't have a blackboard, so I had to write on the wall," she said.

After cleaning the bedroom wall of crayon marks for the second time, her parents bought her a blackboard.

a history of hard work

Eileen Burgess Holden was born on Oct. 8, 1955, to Thomas and Margaret Rooney Burgess in Cortlandt Manor, N.Y., a Hudson River town about 50 miles north of New York City.

Her father was a sheet metal worker and upholsterer for the New York Central Railroad, and her mother worked as a department store clerk and later as a teacher's aide in a special education classroom. They still live in Cortlandt Manor.

Despite its proximity to the Big Apple, Cortlandt Manor is a small town, the sisters said, and growing up there in the 1950s and 1960s resembled more "Leave It To Beaver" than "The Naked City."

Her parents didn't steer her toward becoming a teacher, Holden said, and there were no teachers in her family background.

"I knew I wanted to be a teacher probably because I liked my teachers in school," Holden said. "I was very driven when I made up my mind."

The parents encouraged their daughters to do well in school and eventually to go to college, an opportunity they never had, the sisters said.

They encouraged, but did not pressure, Holden said.

"They wanted very much for me to go to college. My father worked many overtime hours and double shifts to raise the money to send me to college," she said.

She got her work ethic from her father and maternal grandmother, who moved into the house in the early 1960s to help raise the girls while her mother worked. The grandmother took over all the domestic chores.

"My grandmother ran the house. It's the reason I can't sew or cook today - she did it all for me," she said.

Holden said she did pick up from her grandmother a "non-negotiable principle:" Treat people well and work hard.

Holden worked hard and got straight A's in elementary and high schools, her sister recalled. She even got a perfect 4.0 in her first semester at college, despite missing three weeks while recovering from a serious illness.

From age 16 through her college years, Holden also worked as a department store clerk for spending money and to help pay for college.

"I never thought about not working. Always in my home there was this ethic about working," Holden said.

When she graduated from Utica College in 1977, Holden decided she'd had enough of the New York climate. She found her first teaching job at a Houston high school.

Holden also decided to pursue a master's degree, which she received from the University of Houston in 1983.

She had hoped the degree would help her advance through the Houston schools, Holden said, but that changed when she heard of an opening at the local community college. That changed her life and career path.

"I started to get very excited as a teacher about all the possibilities in a community college," she said. "The thing about community colleges is they have a whole range of ages and people with different goals. Working in a community college hooked me - hook, line and sinker."

She left Houston Community College in 1986, when she found an opportunity to build an adult education department from the ground floor at Lummi Community College on the Lummi Indian reservation near Bellingham, Wash. It is now called the Northwest Indian College.

But Holden found she didn't like the lack of sunshine in the Northwest, and she looked to move back to the Sunbelt. She found the perfect opportunity the following year at Palm Beach Community College, where she became a program manager for adult reading and education.

During her time at Palm Beach, she met and married Al Holden, a tennis instructor who gave up his job when she got the PCC job so the couple could relocate to Winter Haven.

"My entire family, including my husband, has been extremely supportive of my career," Holden said. "His support over the past 21 years has been invaluable."

Regarding other aspects of their relationship, Holden said, "I respect his right to privacy."

a changing path

It was also at Palm Beach that Holden decided she wanted to move from the classroom to an administrative career track. Once again, she displayed her determination to rise to the top in the field as a community college president.

"She was interested in advancing her career, and she knew she needed to know more about the business side," said Dick Becker, vice president of administration and business services at the Palm Beach college and one of Holden's mentors. "She's high energy, high passion. She's one of those people who gets the job done."

Holden credited John Schmiederer, a retired Palm Beach vice president now living in Polk City, as the mentor from whom she learned the most about college administration during her 14 years there.

"She learned very fast. She was a self-starter," Schmiederer said.

Schmiederer advised Holden that to get to the top, she would need a doctorate degree in education. She followed that advice and got a doctorate in higher education administration in 1997 from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale.

By that time, she had become dean for academic affairs at the Palm Beach college, and she had already acquired a reputation for her straightforward management style, Schmiederer said.

"There were some people who didn't like her management style, her directness," he said. "She didn't take it personally."

But Holden made it clear she wanted her people to be team players, Schmiederer said, and if they didn't want to play by her rules, she would help them find another job.

"I think why Eileen was so successful in building a team was that it was not beneath her to be part of the team. She was always ready to roll up her sleeves," said Sharon Sass, vice president of academic affairs at Palm Beach.

And if she made a decision someone didn't like, she never resolved the conflict by taking an "I'm the boss" approach, they said.

Holden agreed: "I'm not a 'my way or the highway' administrator. I'm very collaborative. I can be influenced."

"She's very honest, straightforward and direct. You don't wonder where she stands on the issues," said Lois Bolton, a provost at Broward Community College, where Holden became vice president for academic affairs in 2001.

Bolton, Schmiederer and Holden's other colleagues agreed, she won more friends than enemies among students, faculty and administrators because she was also a good listener. Holden was always prepared to listen to dissenting opinions and to explain her own position in a rational way.

"When she's talking to you, you really feel she's focusing on you," Bolton said. "She's one of the most energetic, personable administrators I've ever met. By the end of her first semester, she had won the hearts of everyone at Broward Community College."

The same thing has happened at PCC, Pinner said.

"She's several times better in reality than she was in our interviews," he said. "She's a professional and has high energy. She's a great leader on campus."

But Holden acknowledged her high energy can work against her. She has difficulty trying to relax off the job - even with a notably low-energy task of watching TV.

"I've been known to lie on the couch and surf 300 channels," Holden said. "I would like to learn to relax more. I have to work to relax."

Kevin Bouffard can be reached at kevin.bouffard@theledger.com or at 863-802-7591.