Susanna Grannis

Susanna W. Grannis (born 1937) is a retired American academic, and the founder of CHABHA (Children Affected by HIV/AIDS), a nonprofit organization that supported orphans and vulnerable children in Rwanda, Burundi, and South Africa from 2004 to 2014. She was professor and dean at the University of Illinois Chicago, Queens College, and at the Bank Street College of Education. She is the author of Hope Amidst Despair: HIV/AIDS-Affected Children in Sub-Saharan Africa (Pluto, 2011) and two self-published children's books. Writing as Susanna W. Pflaum, she is the author of books and academic papers about teaching and education, with a particular focus on advancing academic opportunity for disadvantaged students. She lives in Stuyvesant Falls, New York.

Education

Grannis graduated cum laude in 1959 from Radcliffe College (now part of Harvard University) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, before getting her master's degree in elementary education at Harvard Graduate School of Education the following year. From 1960 to 1963, Grannis worked as an elementary school teacher at Newton Public Schools in Newton, Massachusetts.

From 1963 to 1966, Grannis worked as a grade 6 teacher at the laboratory school of the Inter-American University in San Germán and later as instructor at the Inter-American University branch Hato Rey, Puerto Rico. Two years later, she moved to Tallahassee, Florida, where she worked as a graduate instructor and earned her Ph.D. in elementary education from Florida State University. In 1970-1971 she also worked as an instructor at Mankato State College (now Minnesota State University) in Mankato, Minnesota.