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Her talent for organizing and directing was apparent during her term as Grand Secretary, when she oversaw the difficult task of preparing Kappa’s first Catalogue (Membership Directory), published in May 1890. During her term on the Grand Council, six chapters and the one and only alumna group (Chicago Association Chapter, Beta Theta) were added. But her feelings on extension were considered radical; she felt it better to annex possibly excellent new chapters and eliminate less than desirable old ones than proceed slowly and with caution.
In her personal life, she, her husband Addison Burnham and three children (a fourth had died in infancy) spent summers in Maine (she organized a library there) and love canoe trips; her husband was known to walk by her side as one of the few men in suffragette suffrage parades in Boston.
She is best known, however, for her passion and devotion to eliminating the slums and tenements that powerful landlords and inert city officials had allowed to prevail in Boston. She was instrumental in the Morton Street Improvement, called “one of the best pieces of work done in the city for many years,” removing a slum of more than 700 inhabitants. In 1929 she was made chairman of the Housing Committee of the Massachusetts Civic League, watching over all state bills related to housing and town planning.