Director of MPA Program at KSG Dies

Sarah Sue Williamson, the director of the Master in Public Administration program at the Kennedy School of government, died on May 27 after a four-month battle with cancer. She was 59.

Williamson will be remembered at the Kennedy School for her laughter and her caring, motherly attitude.

“You couldn’t sit and not smile if you heard Sue laughing in the building,” said Joseph J. McCarthy, the Kennedy School’s senior associate dean and director of degree programs. “It reminded me of a kind of tidal wave and it would lift all of our boats.”

Her colleagues valued her presence, and the affection was mutual.

“I would drop her off at work in the morning and of course on the outside you would see a woman towing her briefcase on wheels but on the inside was a little girl skipping to school,” her husband Joseph Goodnough said.

Known for her devotion to her students, Williamson always made sure to learn their names.

“By the end of the first week she could call 450 people by their first name,” Goodnough said.

Though Williamson officially served as an advisor for students in the program, her duties often extended far beyond—from helping them find childcare to giving them career tips.

Elias Mudzuri, a politician from Zimbabwe who will be graduating this week from the mid-career program, described Williamson as a “mother of the Kennedy School.”

“She has become an example of an American administrator who really accommodates all cultures,” Mudzuri said.

Another student, Marietta I. Geckos, who graduated from the mid-career program in 2002, said she has received e-mails from around the world since Williamson’s death.

“She had the amazing characteristic of making every single student feel extremely special,” Geckos said. “I don’t know how she did it year after year.”

But Williamson will also be missed at her home as she leaves behind her husband, her stepson, and her four grandchildren.

“What a rounded woman to not only be totally professional at work and then she’d come home and be with her family and her grandchildren and her friends and the same thing again and again,” Goodnough said.

Williamson and Goodnough met 25 years ago, racing together as a sailing team on Lake Sunapee in New Hampshire. They married in 1984.

Before coming to the Kennedy School, Williamson worked across sectors, including teaching inner city students in Philadelphia and starting her own career counseling office. Williamson graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Boston in 1968 before obtaining a master’s degree in Education at Temple University and an MBA at Simmons University.

As the Kennedy School prepares for Thursday’s commencement, the void left by Williamson will be hard to fill.

“It will be very difficult for us to have this commencement and this celebration without Sue there with us because she was always the leader of the celebrations,” McCarthy said.

—Staff writer Claire M. Guehenno can be reached at guehenno@fas.harvard.