Gwynette Proctor

“God is good all the time and all the time, God is good.”

Sister Gwynette Proctor, SNDdeN entered the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in August 1980. She celebrated her 40th Jubilee as a Sister in 2020.

Born into the long-time Catholic culture of Southern Maryland, Sister Gwynette Proctor is the daughter of Yolanda and Leon Proctor. She was raised in Baltimore alongside four siblings and countless foster brothers and sisters.

After graduating from Frostburg State College, she became a teacher in Baltimore City. “As the daughter of a school teacher, I valued the profession and emulated my mother in following it,” she shares. During those years, “she was invited”—an experience that opened her to the realization of a calling to become a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur. While participating in an Adult Peer Retreat Program, she met a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur who asked her, “Have you ever thought of being a Sister?” The question stayed with her and eventually guided her vocational path.

Her lifelong dedication to education in its many forms aligned naturally with the mission of the Congregation. As the daughter of a schoolteacher, she valued the profession deeply and followed her mother’s example. In 1984, in collaboration with the Archdiocese of Baltimore, she became the Coordinator of Urban Youth Ministry and founded the Harambee Catholic Youth Organization—a program for the spiritual, educational, and leadership development of young Black lives.

In the years that followed, Sister Gwynette served in a range of educational and leadership roles: Principal of the Academy of Notre Dame in Washington, D.C.; Executive Director of the National Black Sisters Conference; and Director of Catholic Charities programs in Baltimore, including Our Daily Bread, a soup kitchen, and Christopher Place Employment Academy, a residential education and job-training program for formerly homeless men.

Her ministry then expanded to Lawrence, Massachusetts, where she was called in 2002 to serve as Executive Director of the Notre Dame Education Center. “I learned of many different cultures and was inspired by peoples’ determination to learn the English language, obtain a GED or acquire appropriate job skills,” she remembers. She later served on the SNDdeN National Leadership Team before becoming Director of the Office of Black Catholic Ministries in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Sister Gwynette describes her years as a Sister of Notre Dame as both enriching and challenging. “I continue to be inspired by Julie’s commitment to ‘stand with and for the poor and oppressed in the most abandoned places,'” she shares. “I will continue to work toward ‘right relationships’ that empower people and promote ‘justice, equality and equity’ for all in our communities.

Updated in 2020