Episode 198: From Convent to Corporate
/“As a nun, I had the freedom to do a lot of things within a certain context that I wouldn’t have had otherwise...I actually felt often like I had more freedom than some of my married or coupled friends at that time.”
Ellen Snee
Ellen Snee decided to become a nun in the early ‘70s, which seemed an inopportune time. Society was changing rapidly, there were riots on her college campus, and as a friend pointed out, nuns and priests were abandoning convents and the priesthood, not joining. But Ellen felt a sense of mission and purpose that didn’t go away. She spent 18 mostly happy years with an international order of nuns, the Religious of the Sacred Heart.
In a stereotype-busting conversation, Ellen describes how life in a convent gave her a freedom her married girlfriends lacked, how she hoped to change the Catholic Church from the inside, and how taking a vow of chastity didn’t mean the end of her relationships with men.
Ellen (second from right) making her final vows in Rome
After studying human psychology with an emphasis on women, Ellen switched to corporate life in the 1990s, working with women in leadership. There she used the wisdom she’d gained during her years of working closely with other nuns, women in authority in a patriarchal system.
Since leaving the convent she has used her insights to help professional women “learn how to know what they know, how to recognize their desire, and how to pursue it.”
Ellen is the author of the book LEAD: How Women in Charge Claim their Authority.
You can also read a transcript of the show.