Helen LaKelly Hunt

Helen LaKelly Hunt is one of a small army of women who helped to seed the women’s funding movement. She cofounded The Dallas Women’s Foundation, The New York Women’s Foundation, and The Women’s Funding Network. She is author of Faith and Feminism: A Holy Alliance & And The Spirit Moved Them: The Lost Radical History of the First Feminists (Spring 2017). She is the founder and president of The Sister Fund, a private foundation that focuses on faith, feminism and relationship as all three, intrinsic to women’s wholeness. Helen also helped to catalyze, with her sister Ambassador Swanee Hunt, Women Moving Millions, a global network of donors that have made unprecedented gifts of $1 million or more for the advancement of women and girls. Helen was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2001.

In addition, she has co-authored several books with her partner, Harville Hendrix, on their development of Imago Relationship Therapy. They are now working to disseminate an educational process called Safe Conversations starting with the city of Dallas. This new relational technology can help to actualize something feminists have long asserted must come to pass, the need for a new value system – shifting away from competition to collaboration, ‘power-over’, to ‘power-with’ – in order to create a more relational culture.

Helen holds a Ph.D. from Union Theological Seminary, as well as three degrees from Southern Methodist University: a B.A. in Secondary Education, an M.L.A. in Liberal Arts, and an M.A. in Counseling. She also holds an honorary Ph.D. from the Chicago Theological Seminary. Helen and Harville now live in Dallas, Texas.

Follow Hunt on Twitter @HelenLKHunt.