
The daughter of immigrants from the Ukraine, Dr. Tendler was a native of Detroit. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Michigan. She completed Ph.D. work st Columbia University with the aid of a scholarship from the Ford Foundation.
Before joining the faculty at MIT, Dr. Tendler worked as an economist for the U.S. Agency for International Development, conducting much of her research in Latin America. She joined the MIT faculty in 1984 and retired from teaching in 2011.
Dr. Tendler was the author of three books including Good Government in the Tropics (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998) and Electric Power in Brazil: Entrepreneurship in the Public Sector (Harvard University Press, 1968).


