Margaret (Ellickson) Senturia papers (MS.2021.003)

Biographical/Historical Note

The following biographical note was written by Margaret (Ellickson) Senturia in November, 2019. It is recorded here in the first person.

Born September 7, 1939, I grew up in Washington, DC, where my father was an economist at the Department of Agriculture and my mother was Director of Research at the Congress of Industrial Organizations and an advocate for women's issues. I attended the public schools and also received a thorough political education at home.

At Pembroke I majored in math because it came easily to me and I finished the course work quickly. My boyfriend for my first years at Brown, Bowen Tucker, was a math major. I became increasingly interested in history. A couple of months before graduation I met Tedd Dickerman, a PhD student in history at Brown and married him on June 2, 1962. I had begun graduate work in history, which I continued to the point of beginning a dissertation on the history of science in colonial America. I took part in the women's liberation movement and grew increasing interested in personal relationships.

My son (Sam Dickerman) was born in 1969. In 1971 I divorced Tedd and moved to Boston, where I got a degree in clinical social work from Boston University in 1974. I worked as an individual, group, and family therapist and was elected president of the Society for Family Therapy and Research.

To learn more about influencing organizations, I went to MIT's Sloan School as a fellow, graduating in 1985, and became a management consultant and trainer, working with Fortune 100 companies and government agencies on total quality management. Before my retirement in 2000, I returned to human services for several years to apply what I had learned in the corporate world.

In 1992 I married Steve Senturia.

Since retirement I've been active in local politics and in the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement. I enjoy reading, babysitting my grandchildren, gardening, hiking, writing poetry and memoirs, and traveling with my husband.