Cruz, 43, grew up in San Luis Obispo, Calif., the daughter of a dentist and dental hygienist who are Seventh-day Adventists.
When she was 5, Heidi’s parents signed her up for piano lessons, and she insisted on practicing an hour and sometimes two each night. At age 8, when her parents first enrolled her in school, a family trip to Washington sparked an interest in politics. By fifth grade, Heidi announced she wanted to go to Harvard Business School.
“I don’t even know how she knew about Harvard Business School. It wasn’t in our world at all,” her mother, Suzanne Nelson, said in an interview. “A good word to describe her is ‘driven.’ I don’t really know what has made her so driven.”
She attended high school at Monterey Bay Academy, an Adventist school in Northern California with a mile-long private beach and strict rules about curfews and interactions between boys and girls. Heidi Nelson was preppy, popular and always studying.
One year, she ran for student body president. Her campaign poster read, “Heidi Nelson, the auspicious choice,” according to classmate Travis Romero.
“I asked her, ‘Nobody knows what the word auspicious is,’ ” Romero said. “She said, ‘Isn’t that great? You get an extra word for your SATs.’”
Despite the slogan, Cruz lost. Romero said he endearingly thought of Cruz when he watched the movie “Election,” in which Reese Witherspoon plays an overachieving student running for class president.
Cruz went to Claremont McKenna College and was active in the college Republicans and interested in appointive political office, said her mentor, Edward Haley. She also was intent on a career in business first. She moved to New York after graduation and worked on emerging markets at J.P. Morgan, an area in which she was interested after spending summers in Africa doing missionary work with her parents. She was put on the Latin America desk and taught herself to speak Spanish between 18-hour work days.
Cruz achieved her dream of attending Harvard Business School but turned down a job at Goldman Sachs to work on George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign. She told the New York Times in 2001 that she had just broken up with a boyfriend of two years. She planned to “forget boys” and “kill myself on the campaign.”
