“When I think back about what it was like for me to be a girl in 1952, the change is enormous. I think a huge amount has happened since then.”

Peggy McIntosh ’52 marvels at the world’s positive evolution in the past seven decades, but through her career as an activist, feminist, senior research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women in Massachusetts, and founder of The National SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) Project on Inclusive Curriculum, there can be no doubt that she has deftly helped to move the needle.

Peggy’s enrollment in George School’s Class of 1952 was her parents’ decision, and the first few weeks were a challenge for the 15-year-old.

“After the United States dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, my parents were so shocked by the loss of civilian life that they became pacifists,” she said. They sent her to George School “because it was a Quaker school, and hoped that some of the peacefulness would rub off on me.”

“I was not clear about what meeting for worship was for,” she continued. “I thought you were meant to sit and consider how bad you were; my grandmother had taken me to her church many times. So in Quaker meeting, one had almost an hour to ponder one’s sins. I was very uncomfortable. I never spoke.”

Today, Peggy realizes that the structure of Quaker meeting laid the foundation for a key facet of her work within SEED, a program that guides professionals to advance social change within their organizations.

“The meeting that I thought I was meant to spend thinking about my sins was, in fact, a place in which anybody might speak,” she said. “There was no pulpit or hierarchy. And it’s not a question of dithering over whether you are good enough, eloquent enough, spiritual enough to speak; you know that you will speak. You also know that you will be heard, and that nobody will argue with you.”

“‘Serial testimony,’ the method I devised for teachers to discuss things in groups, has a couple of rules that, I now think, came from Quakerism,” said Peggy. “In it, you speak not with your opinions, but with your experience. You speak in turn, for one minute each. You may not refer to anything anyone else has said. And at the end of that series, there is no debrief.”

Because serial testimony keeps fear of judgment and misinterpretation off the table, its participants are less self-conscious — and are rewarded with the gratification that comes from knowing they spoke their piece.

“You are the only authority in the universe on your experience,” said Peggy. “That is why this method will not allow anyone else to question it. There is no ‘did I make a fool of myself?’ or ‘everyone else was so much smarter than me.’”

Serial testimony “owes George School for the example,” she said. “It has a debt to Quakerism.”

SEED “was a result of bad weather,” said Peggy. “I was hired by Wellesley College to run faculty development seminars on bringing women into the curriculum in college courses in any field. I facilitated these seminars once a month, in 1979-81. Word got around, and people began to ask to be in these seminars. School teachers, department heads, and school principals began to say, ‘We want that.’” But after her flights out of Boston to other cities were grounded twice, forcing her to cancel the seminars, Peggy had a revelation.

“What I found, when I rejoined the group, was that they were perfectly fine. They didn’t need me,” she said. “And then the idea for the National SEED Project was born. I thought, ‘All I have to do is prepare people to lead seminars and they can do it in their own schools.’” The project is now in its 39th year. Over 4,000 professionals of every stripe across 45 US and 16 international locations have received SEED seminar training, including participants from George School, which has implemented the project this year. Seminar participants report that they are better equipped to listen to others as well as themselves, and maintain a deeper appreciation of the gifts of diverse voices.

Peggy has been honored with the George School 1993 Alumni Award and the Harvard Centennial Medal, the latter for what the school deems “contributions to society.” More specifically, she credits “my phase theory about changing classes to include something other than white men,” she said wryly, “on my work on white privilege and for ‘Feeling Like a Fraud,’” her papers which explore feelings of illegitimacy, which she worked to mitigate in serial testimony.

Most recently, Peggy was elected to the 2024 National Women’s Hall of Fame, “partly on the strength of serial testimony.” Despite regressions and more hurdles ahead, she knows women’s rights have come a long way, and continue their forward momentum.

“The changes have been huge,” Peggy continued. “Women are still marching for the same things in a few areas. But they’re not marching now to be a CEO, a physician, to insist that women be given Nobel Prizes. Those have been fought and won.”

Now 90, she has planned her next adventure: “a book based on interviews with 30 white people who have used their white power to share power,” said Peggy. “I think they will testify that having white privilege damaged them in some ways, and that sharing the power that comes with it is a blessing for the party that’s doing it as well as the recipient. But also, when you share power with people who have had less, they have so much to teach you.”

Throughout her career, Peggy has shared her power, often using her own stories to do it. At public speaking events, her vulnerability inspires a sense of clarity within her audience members, inspiring them to meet their souls — and bloom.

“You go to school to read books by other people about what other people think,” she said. “You don’t go to school for self-knowledge. When you begin to get it, it’s a spiritual experience: you have tracked down the deepest parts of yourself that hold you together. People like to have that experience. They go out of the lecture hall saying, ‘I’m OK. I have the soul. And if I’m lucky, I’m able to touch that soul and use it and create with it and enjoy life with it.’”