The Rev. Dr. Ellen Richardson

Denomination: The Episcopal Church (TEC)
Organization: Episcopal Church of the Advent, Williamston, NC

The Rev. Dr. Ellen Richardson grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and graduated with a degree in Political Science from Georgia State University in 1974.  She received her MD from Medical College of Georgia in 1987, and her Masters in Divinity from Episcopal Divinity School in 2011. 

She practiced Family Medicine in rural Tennessee and Georgia for 17 years followed by 10 years practicing exclusively as a Hospice and Palliative Care physician in Savannah, Georgia and Northern Virginia.  She was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church in 2008 and worked bi-vocationally until retiring from her medical career in 2014 to work full time as Assistant Rector of St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Tifton, Georgia.  There she served on the Board of Directors of Hospice of Tift Area and as a volunteer chaplain at Tift Regional Medical Center. In December 2017, she answered a call to become Priest in Charge of Church of the Advent in Williamston, North Carolina, in the Episcopal Diocese of East Carolina.

In her book, Holy Dying: Stories and Struggles, released by Church Publishing in March, 2017, she draws from the intersection of her two professions, offering stories that invite the reader to wrestle with many of the medical and spiritual questions frequently faced in a highly medicalized experience of illness and dying that is one of the social challenges of our time.