Patricia “Pat” Heller is a Major Gifts Officer at Cottage Health System. Her primary responsibility is working with the Physician Task Force of The Campaign for Cottage Health System. Made up of retired and active physicians, the committee is the lead group in securing support from their colleagues for the $100 million fundraising campaign to build the new Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital. The campaign recently passed the halfway benchmark with donations and pledges.
Ms. Heller also is overseeing the Cottage Founders Society made up of individual, corporate and foundation major gift donors to the campaign.

Most recently, Ms. Heller served as Director of Development for the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum and as Major Gifts Officer at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Earlier in her career, she owned Heller Vanek Design, a design and giftware business with national distribution and spent several years in the newspaper and public relations fields.

Ms. Heller received her BA in journalism from San Jose State University and her MBA from the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis. She also completed the Certified Fund Raising certificate program at UCLA. She currently volunteers for Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic and DAWG, both in Santa Barbara.

The not-for-profit Cottage Health System, the parent organization of Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital and its associated Cottage Children’s Hospital, Santa Ynez Valley Cottage Hospital, and Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital last year provided inpatient care for 20,000 people, treated 61,000 patients through their 24-hour emergency departments and helped deliver 2,800 newborns.