Prior to serving as Mayor, she was elected City Controller in 1977 and was re-elected to a second term in 1979. She was the first woman to be elected to any City office in Houston. While Mayor, Ms. Whitmire also served as President of both the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the Texas Municipal League.

During the 1980’s, Ms. Whitmire led the campaign to diversify Houston’s economy and to market the city nationally and internationally which resulted in renewed economic growth. During her tenure as Mayor, she triple Houston’s park space and expanded cultural resources while reducing the cost of government by consolidating city departments, re-structuring employee benefit programs, and privatizing many functions. She obtained voter approval of more than $1 billion in bonds for capital improvements and made major improvements in the City’s public transportation, emergency medical services, police services and wastewater treatment.

To coordinate Houston’s fight against drug abuse, Ms. Whitmire established and chaired Houston Crackdown, which has attracted millions of dollars in federal and state anti-drug grants to Houston. In 1993 and 1996, she chaired policy development panels for JOIN TOGETHER, a national resource for communities fighting substance abuse headquartered at Boston University.

Ms. Whitmire is a member of the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange and is an advisor to the Kellogg Foundation’s National Leadership Program. She is also a Director of Abt Associates, Inc., an international research corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She serves as Vice-Chair of the Board of Scenic America, a national advocacy group for the scenic environment, and is a member of the Board of the Police Foundation, a research organization in Washington, D.C., working to improve the quality of policing in American cities.

In addition, she serves on the National Health Tracking Advisory Committee for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and is a member of the Board of the American Leadership Forum.

After leaving office in 1992, Ms. Whitmire joined the faculty of Rice University in Houston where she was Director of the Rice Institute for Policy Analysis and held the Tsanoff Lectureship in Public Affairs, teaching courses in public policy, management, and political science.

She was also a commentator on public issues for KHOU Television and a talk show host for KPRC Radio in Houston. In 1994, she was appointed President and CEO of Junior Achievement, Inc.

In 1995 and 1996, Ms. Whitmire served as a Lecturer on Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and was also a Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. She has also lectured extensively on local government, economic development and women's issues in various countries in Eastern Europe, South Asia and the Middle East.

A certified public accountant, Ms. Whitmire was associated with a national CPA firm in Houston for eight years. She was also on the faculty of the Department of Business Management at the University of Houston’s Downtown College and conducted a public accounting practice in partnership with her late husband, Jim Whitmire.