Jill Ker Conway (9 October, 1934-1 June, 2018) was a schlar, educator, and author from Australia. She was especially renowned for the biographies and memoirs she wrote.
Fun Facts about Jill Ker Conway:
1. Jill Ker was born in Hillston, New South Wales – Australia‘s outback. Her family lived on 18,000 acres called Coorain (“windy place” in Aboriginal).
2. As a young girl, Ms. Ker lived a lonely life. She had two brothers but no playmates. She was also educated at home by her mother, aided by correspondence material.
3. As young as seven years old she was already working at the sheep station, tending sheep, riding fences, and driving heavy equipment.
4. The farm was successful, until a crippling seven-year drought brought it down to her knees. Mr. Ker, who was suffering from ill health, drowned in a diving accident white attempting to extend the farm’s water piping.
5. Mrs. Ker, a nurse by profession, stayed for three more years before moving to Sydney, where Jill Ker Conway and her brothers attended a proper school, which she found socially difficult.
6. After she graduated from the University of Sydney with a degree in History and English, Ms. Ker traveled to the Europe with her mother. She was accepted to the history program at Harvard University‘s Radcliffe College and moved to the United States in 1960.
7. She studied women’s history, not yet a discipline, and did her dissertation on American activist and reformer Jane Addams. At Harvard she assisted Professor John Conway, whom she married in 1962.
B. Jill Ker Conway served as a teacher and on several corporate boards, as well as non-profits.
8. in 1975, Jill Ker Conway became the first female president of the largest women’s college in the United States, Smith College. While a private liberal arts college, it was the only women’s college to have its own engineering degree.
10. After leaving Smith College, while working at MIT, she published her best-selling memoir The Road From Coorain in 1989. The book was produced as a TV film starring actress Katherine Slattery as the adult Jill Ker Conway,
Zohar – Man of la Book
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Sources:
Dr Jill Ker Conway | Infinite Women
Jill Ker Conway | National Endowment for the Humanities
