Patricia Mulroy was born in Frankfurt, Germany on February 24, 1953. As a young girl, she lived in several different countries, but always felt that the United States was her home. Her experiences abroad led her to develop a fascination with government work and state service. She arrived in Nevada in 1974 to attend the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In 1989, Mulroy became the general manager of the Las Vegas Valley Water District. She entered the field at a tumultuous time, facing the drought of the Colorado River and tension within the districts.
Jack Leavitt was a land surveyor, engineer, and real estate developer in Southern Nevada who worked mainly in Las Vegas, Nevada. Leavitt was born on March 9, 1924 in Bunkerville, Nevada to Mike and Estella Leavitt. Leavitt graduated from Las Vegas High School in 1942 and attended the Heald Engineering College in San Francisco, California. After leaving college, Leavitt acquired work from an engineering firm in Nevada, but later quit to work for the Pioneer Title Insurance and Trust Company in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he was employed for ten years.
Ruby Duncan was born in Tallulah, Louisiana on June 7, 1932. Her parents passed away when Duncan was three years old and she spent the remainder of her youth living with various relatives in and around Tallulah. Duncan started work at the Ivory Plantation at an early age, only going to school part-time. She quit school to work full-time as a waitress and later a barmaid. Duncan left Tallulah for Las Vegas, Nevada in 1952 to live with her aunt near Henderson, Nevada.
"The Las Vegas Women Oral History Project (LVWOHP) evolved from a collaboration to build a collection of sources on women’s lives in Las Vegas. At the time it began (circa 1994), a critical shortage of information on women’s lives existed in traditional repositories and few oral history projects collected the narratives of women. By 2009, other efforts have taken hold to include women in southern Nevada’s history.