Jill Ker Conway

“The big attraction [to the U.S.] was an academic world which was interested in and valued the kind of research and writing I wanted to do, which was not the case in Australia,” Jill Ker Conway told the Australian Broadcasting Commission in 2013. Ker Conway, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1960, became the first woman president of the all-women’s Smith College in 1975, building her presidency around “matters of central importance in women’s lives,” as she noted in her inaugural address. Over ten years, Ker Conway brought in funding to research women’s experiences in the humanities, created a scholars program for older women, launched a training program for women executives, and supported mothers on welfare to study at the college. She has written several books on the role of feminism in American history, but her greatest legacy may be her best-selling memoirs:  The Road from Coorain (1989), True North (1994), and A Woman’s Education (2001). Ker Conway, who received the National Humanities Medal in 2012, has served as a board member or trustee of a number of organizations, including Nike, Merrill Lynch, and the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. Updated 2018