Recognized as one of the pioneers in the field of community organization in the urban planning process and the 1960s women’s rights movement, Dorothy Senerchia served as a long-term urban planner for the New York City Department of City Planning from 1962 until her retirement in 1996. Given that it was difficult for a woman to acquire a position of authority in the 1960s, she was thrilled when she was offered a job in the field of urban planning. During those years, she also sat on the planning committee for the historic 1970 Women’s March for Equality in New York City. For 13 years, she served as a counsellor for the Big Sisters organization, mentoring young people, a practice which occupies a great deal of her time today.
Earlier in her career, between 1956 and 1961, Ms. Senerchia was an administrative assistant for the Roger Stevens Development Corporation, the Inter-American Council and the Sheraton Corporation of America in New York City. At the inception of her career in 1955, she taught at the Berlitz School of Languages in Florence, Italy, for one year. Working as an urban planner in New York for almost four decades, she cites the highlight of her career to be the times she was sent out into the community as an organizer to teach New Yorkers how to “fight City Hall.”
Demonstrating versatility along the way, and a desire to broaden her creative education, Ms. Senerchia studied acting with Stella Adler and was inspired by Gladys Vaughan, an accomplished theatre director and visual artist from whom she inherited a very large collection of contemporary art (characterized as Abstract Expressionism). Ms. Senerchia was a coproducer and co-star in the 1980 film “The Funeral,” sponsored by the Women’s Interart Center. Her involvement with the performing arts began as a solo concert violinist from childhood and continued until 1962. While working toward her bachelor’s degree in 1952, she co-founded the internationally renowned acapella singing group, the Chattertocks of Brown University. In 1990, this multi-talented woman became a published author, bringing to light a little-known health issue in the book “Silent Menace – 20th Century Epidemic – Candidiasis.”
Born in Warwick, Rhode Island, Ms. Senerchia primarily resides in New York City. She has been the founder and co-founder of numerous organizations and currently studies foreign languages, travels and markets contemporary art.
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