Susan Garrity has had successful careers in pharmaceutical marketing management roles and as an entrepreneur creating two businesses. She has lived on both coasts, in the Midwest, and for the last 30 years in Raleigh, NC. In recent years, Susan has devoted her energy to leadership positions with community non-profit organizations, most often supporting programs whose missions centered on social justice.

Susan’s path to OHMA began with her involvement with a state wide development effort for a 300 acre urban park (Dix Park) in the Capital City, Raleigh. As a member of the Legacy Committee which honors the Park’s membership in the International Sites of Conscience, Susan and committee members are charged with gathering the oral histories of the site’s many legacies. These legacies include the site’s Indigenous Americans, planation owners, the enslaved, and the 150-year history of the Dix Psychiatric Hospital. Susan’s past professional experience conducting in depth physician thought leader interviews and mediating in District Criminal Court involved some related oral history practices but a desire to be more firmly grounded in the art and science of the discipline led Susan to OHMA.

While the trajectory of the Dix oral histories is unknown, Susan hopes that among other positive outcomes, reconciliation, and restoration among some groups can occur. Additionally, she hopes that park visitors leave with a greater understanding of the multi-faceted history of the land being developed as a “Park for Everyone” and that many are inspired to transform “memory into action”. In the future, Susan hopes to expand the Dix oral history experience to other underrepresented, misunderstood, and often marginalized communities.

She is thrilled to have been accepted into OHMA and looks forward to learning and collaborating with the staff and cohort and expanding her knowledge of other constituent histories illuminated by the group.

Susan’s work with non-profits and at OHMA is supported by her three daughters via Zoom, and, in Raleigh, by her husband, Jeff, and Izzy, a rescue dog.