The Lady of Silk and Steel, From Everest to Embassies tells the rags to riches story of a woman who grew up in nearly destitute circumstances on a small California farm to become a graduate of Stanford University, a tennis star, a national champion downhill ski racer, and a successful attorney who graduated from law school at forty-one, and simultaneously took up the practice of law and high altitude mountain climbing. Ten years later she came incredibly close to being the first US woman to reach the summit of Mt. Everest.
With wit and candor, Sue McCourt Cobb now recounts her extraordinary life story, spanning the mid-twentieth century (1937) to the early years of the twenty-first century (2020) when college-educated women went from secretaries to CEOs, when women learned to balance family, careers, and full adventurous lives. And Sue Cobb has certainly lived several lives in one lifetime. This is a memoir of someone who reached the summit of success while nurturing her family. At every step of her life, she has played her roles superbly. From a corporate and then a diplomatic wife to husband Ambassador Charles Cobb and as full-time mom to sons Christian and Tobin, The Lady of Silk and Steel is both the personal story of a partner, mother, athlete, and friend as well as a revealing account of a professional woman’s life.
Ambassador Sue M. Cobb is President of the Cobb Family Foundation and Principal of Cobb Partners, LLC., former ambassador to Jamaica, secretary of state of Florida, CEO of the Florida Lottery, partner at Greenberg Traurig, and multi-year member and three times chair of the Miami Federal Reserve. She is also a Trustee of CSIS and the Council of American Ambassadors, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and on the Advisory Council of the Association of Diplomatic Studies and Training. Sue is married to Ambassador Chuck Cobb, former U.S. undersecretary of commerce and ambassador to Iceland. Sue Cobb has been an officer and director of several public, private, and charitable boards and has received numerous awards including national honors from both Jamaica and Iceland. The U.S. Department of State awards the Sue M. Cobb Award annually to the individual selected in worldwide competition as the most outstanding non-career U.S. ambassador. A graduate of Stanford University and the University of Miami School of Law and a skilled alpine skier and high altitude climber, she has scaled mountains worldwide and published ‘The Edge of Everest’, a chronicle of her travels across China and Tibet and her climb of Mt. Everest.