Learning to Lead

Phyllis Anne Harrison-Ross was born in Detroit, Michigan on August 14, 1936. She received a bachelor of science degree from Albion College in 1956. In 1959, she was the only black woman in the graduating class of Wayne State University's College of Medicine. She trained as a pediatrician and as a psychiatrist.

She was an early leader in designing rehabilitation and therapy for children with a combination of severe developmental, emotional, and physical disabilities. She was also at the forefront of promoting teleconferencing to bridge gaps between doctors and patients and televisiting to link inmates in prisons in rural parts of upstate New York to their families in New York City and other urban areas. She directed the Community Mental Health Center at Metropolitan Hospital in East Harlem and was the hospital's chief of psychiatry from 1973 to 1999.

She was an emeritus professor of psychiatry and behavioral health services at the New York Medical College. She wrote Getting It Together, a textbook for junior and senior high school students, and The Black Child: A Parents' Guide written with Barbara Wyden. In 2004, she received the American Psychiatric Association's Solomon Carter Fuller Award for African-American Pioneers. She died from lung cancer on January 16, 2017 at the age of 80.

030