Pat first became involved with the technology business in the early 1980s at Addison-Wesley Publishers, as traditional book publishers were expanding into the nascent educational computing market. This early experience in the educational sector led her to her first startup, Mirrorsoft, the bootstrapped edutainment software publishing subsidiary of Robert Maxwell's Mirror Group Newspapers.

Mirrorsoft grew and expanded into applications (Fleet Street Editor, a licensed version of First Publisher, which Pat guided to the #1 position in the UK desktop publishing market) and utilities (File Rescue Plus, a data recovery program which caught the eye of Dr Alan Solomon, Europe's leading data recovery service provider of the time). And thus began her long involvement with computer security.

In 1990, Pat joined Dr Solomon's, the leading European anti-virus vendor, at the point when US companies like Symantec, McAfee and Central Point were just beginning to introduce their products into Europe. She led the company's marketing and international business development efforts, growing international revenues from 2% to 27% of revenues and culminating in the establishment of a US subsidiary in 1995.

Since then, Pat has held senior marketing positions with Symantec and Trend Micro, where she met up with James. In 1998, she moved into the world of VC-funded Silicon Valley start-ups with Perpetual Inc, a developer of desktop management software, and Reasoning Inc, the leading provider of automated software inspection services. In 2001, Pat joined up with Bob Bales and David Stang, the founders of early anti-spyware developer PestPatrol, and recreated the successful Dr Solomon's business model, which culminated in PestPatrol's acquisition by Computer Associates in 2004.

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