A Wellesley graduate, she taught elementary and secondary school in Taiwan, Latin America and the US before returning to graduate school at the University of Michigan (M.A. and Ph.D.) and Johns Hopkins University (postdoc in public health for work on sex education in Colombia.)
Prior to joining the Wellesley Centers, she directed the Resource Center on Educational Equity at the Council of Chief State School Officers in Washington, DC, the Policy Research Office on Women's Education at Harvard University, and held various posts at the Connecticut State Department of Education where she led state efforts to implement federal Title IX regulations.
Susan has conducted research on a variety of issues related to the education of women and girls and was the principal author of How Schools Shortchange Girls (1992), a report that prompted national public dialogue on gender issues in K-12 education. Following the 1995 NGO Forum at the Fourth World Conference for Women in Beijing, China, she coauthored a guide for junior and senior high school teachers, Shaping a Better World: Global Issues/Gender Issues, and Unsafe Schools: A Literature Review of School-Related Gender-Based Violence in Developing Countries. She is currently working on a memoir, The Education of A Feminist.
