The Author

SUSAN BEILBY MAGEE

Susan Beilby Magee © Michael Kress

Susan Beilby Magee’s career spans diverse realms of politics, economics and spirituality. A leader of the women’s movement and director of the Mayor’s Office of Women’s Rights in Seattle, she moved to Washington DC as a White House Fellow in 1976.  Magee held policy and management positions in domestic finance and economic development in the US Treasury and Commerce Departments and later served as an international business consultant. Having earned a BA from Pomona College and MBA from the Wharton School, she has served on numerous boards of directors.

Three decades ago, she turned from business to matters of the heart, meditation and healing, becoming a certified hypnotherapist and meditation teacher. She is the founder of the Washington Circle of Master Healers and participates in healing programs at the Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage at the Washington National Cathedral.

Susan Magee’s life-long friendship with Kalman Aron began when she sat for her portrait at age six. A half century later, the artist asked her to write his story, and she spent countless hours interviewing him, his family and friends and other Latvian survivors. Over nine years, she traveled his path across Europe  from Riga, through seven slave labor and concentration camps in Latvia, Poland, Germany and then Czechoslovakia and finally to Vienna.

Click here to view the Beilby / Magee family portraits by Kalman Aron.