MOULTRIE, Ga. — A graduate of Moultrie High School for Negro Youth who went on to become president of the General Mills Foundation will be honored March 2 with the Colquitt County Career Achievement Award.

Reatha Clark King will speak to Colquitt County High School students at 1 p.m. March 1 in the school gym. The public is invited.

She will receive the award and deliver a different speech at 6:30 p.m. March 2 at the Colquitt County Arts Center. Tickets for that event are on sale at the Moultrie-Colquitt County Chamber of Commerce.

The award was created in 2012 to honor graduates of the Colquitt County School System who have gone on to achieve significant success in their careers outside the immediate area. Previous winners include retired NASA administrator Wayne Littles, MIT researcher David McElroy Jr., medical researcher and University of Virginia professor Terry Turner, internationally acclaimed guitarist Owen Smith, and entrepreneur, engineer and former Florida state legislator Bob Alligood.

Reatha Clark King was born in Pavo, Ga., on April 11, 1938. Her parents were Ola Mae Watts Campbell and Willie B. Clark. She began her elementary education in a one-room school for grades one through seven at Mt. Zion Baptist Church. Her teacher was Florence Frazier. Before completing elementary school at Mt. Zion King moved with her mother to Moultrie. In 1954, she graduated as valedictorian from the Moultrie High School for Negro Youth. She then obtained a scholarship to Clark College in Atlanta, from which she earned her B.S. degree in chemistry and mathematics in 1958. King’s next step came when she received a Woodrow Wilson fellowship to continue her studies at the University of Chicago. From there she earned her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physical chemistry in 1963. Her Ph.D. thesis was titled “Contributions to the Thermochemistry of the Laves Phases.”

  King was hired at that point by the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D. C., becoming the agency’s first African American female chemist. As a research chemist she won the Meritorious Publication Award for her paper on fluoride flame calorimetry. Her research contributed to the NASA space program.

In 1961 she married N. Judge King II and during this time in Washington the couple had two sons, N. Judge III and Scott Clark.

In 1968, the King family moved to New York City where Reatha was hired as an assistant professor at York College of the City University of New York in Jamaica, Queens. At York King become the associate dean for the Division of Natural Science and Mathematics in 1970 and then associate dean for academic affairs in 1974. During these years King received her M.B.A. degree from Columbia University. While living in New York, Reatha’s husband was professor of chemistry and chair of the department of chemistry at Nassau Community College in Garden City, Long Island.

  In 1977, the family moved to Minneapolis, Minn. Reatha King had been recruited to become the second president of Metropolitan State University in Minneapolis and St Paul. She served in this capacity from 1977-1988. After those 11 years, she was hired by General Mills in Minneapolis. Her joint positions were president and executive director of the General Mills Foundation and vice president of the General Mills Corporation. She later served as chairman of the board of the General Mills Foundation and then retired completely from General Mills in 2003.

King has served on numerous corporate boards including the Exxon Mobil Company, H.B. Fuller Company, Wells Fargo & Company, Minnesota Mutual Insurance Company, and Dept 56. She has served on not-for-profit boards including Allina Health Systems, University of Chicago, American Council on Education, the Council on Foundations, and the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD). She has served as a trustee of Clark Atlanta University and Carleton College, and she is an emeritus trustee of the University of Chicago. Currently, she is emeritus board chair of NACD and a member of the Board of Overseers of the Malcolm Baldrige Program for Excellence.

She has received many awards including National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Director of the Year; Defender of Democracy Award from the Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King, Jr., National Memorial Project Foundation, Inc.; the Exceptional Black Scientist Award from the CIBA-GEIGY Corporation; International Citizen Award from the International Leadership Institute; the Louis W. Hill, Jr. Fellowship in Philanthropy at the Hubert H. Humphrey Center of the University of Minnesota; and Ebony Magazines Top 50 Black Executives in Corporate America. She was inducted into the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, founded on dedication to public service. King has been recognized with 14 honorary doctorate degrees.

In May of 2014 King lost her husband of 52 years when Dr. N. Judge King III passed away in Minneapolis. She and her late husband are blessed to have two adult children, N. Judge III and Scott, a daughter-in-law and three grandchildren — MacKensey, Kayla, and N. Judge IV.