Military Service

Prior to teaching, Zink served in the U.S. Navy, worked in marketing, sales and sales management at a software company in Cupertino; fields which, at the time, employed a scant number of women.

“Every job that I was in, with the exception of one, I was the first woman in the job. You have to prove yourself. You know that expression, ‘Women have to do twice as much to prove that they’re half as good’? It really applied. It doesn’t so much anymore. Things have really changed.”

In her final occupation before teaching, Zink whetted her interests in entrepreneurship and healthy eating by opening her own catering company.

In high school, Zink was the valedictorian of her graduating class, and upon her father’s request, she applied for the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program’s four-year scholarship that would minimize her family’s burden of sending eight children to college. She was ultimately admitted to Northwestern’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) 44-student unit, and became one of the fifteen women given ROTC scholarships in the entire country. She called herself “shocked” at first learning of her acceptance.

As the first female admitted to Northwestern’s ROTC Unit, Zink was faced with skepticism by fellow students and felt the need to prove herself.

“They had boy uniforms, but not girl uniforms. So I was in civilian clothes, and all the boys [were] in uniform,” she said. “That’s a really good way to make you feel like an ‘other.’ I finally convinced the supply chief to give me a boy’s uniform.”

She also discussed her first encounter with her class advisor.

Instead of dropping out of the program, as did many of the girls in the following classes admitted to the ROTC unit, her advisor’s words had a galvanizing effect on her.

“I didn’t cry, which was hard not to, but I didn’t cry. I thought, ‘There’s no way in hell I’m crying in front of this guy,’” Zink said. “So, I just looked at him sort of stunned and said, ‘Yes sir.’ I walked out and raged all the way home, stomped down to my dorm and just had a big temper tantrum. I was very upset [but] I thought I [would] show [him]. I will not only not flunk out. I will be the best midshipman. And I was. I was selected for battalion commander my senior year; that’s the top spot.”

Zink went on the serve in the Navy on active duty for years and spent 19 years in U.S. Naval Reserve.

“My first commanding officer said, ‘I’ve never worked with a woman officer before, so I’m really not quite sure how to treat you,’” she said. “You know you don’t want to be snarky to a senior officer, so I said ‘Well sir, perhaps you could just try treating me like an ensign. That’s what I am’ — he kind of looked embarrassed, as he should have.”

During Zink’s tenure in the navy, she encountered many a person who exhibited sexist tendencies toward her. In her 14th year of service, when she was in the reserves, she tried to quit, growing exasperated with the attitudes around her.

“I stomped into my executive officer’s office and said, ‘That’s it, I quit,’” Zink said. ‘I am not going to do this anymore.’ He said, ‘But the navy needs people like you who are willing to stick up for yourselves and push back, and if you quit what happens to all the other women coming behind you?’ So obviously I stayed, but it can be very, very weary.”

These days, Zink believes that attitudes toward women have markedly improved. Her own daughters, Katie Hollier (‘95) and Kristine Hime (‘98), followed in her footsteps, serving in the Marine Corps and the Navy, respectively.
“[Kristine] was responsible for the mechanical functioning of the nuclear reactor on an aircraft carrier,” Zink said. “That’s a pretty big job, and she was 26, and she didn’t face that [sexism]. My older daughter in the marines didn’t either, and I’m very, very happy about that. I think that things have really changed for the better.”