From 1905 to 1914, she served as a missionary in Burma with her husband, Heber H. Votaw, a Seventh-day Adventist minister, whom she wed in 1903.There, she was an early member of the Women's Bureau of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, serving as a probation officer,[4] and running a program for unwed mothers.Soon after her brother was elected to the presidency in 1920, she was appointed to head the social service division of the U.S. Public Health Service,[6][7] while her husband was named by Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty as Superintendent of Prisons and chairman of the boards of parole at each institution.[8][9] Mrs. Votaw also served as an advisor to the Federal Board of Vocation Education within the Veterans' Bureau, which caused her name to arise during testimony in the successful prosecution of the bureau's director, Charles R. Forbes, on corruption charges.[11] In 1924, after President Harding died in office, Heber Votaw's integrity was challenged in a U.S. Senate hearing on misconduct within the Daugherty Department of Justice.