Olivia Egleston Phelps Stokes was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the daughter of the educator and philanthropist Rev.

Her maternal great-grandfather was Daniel Lindley, an American missionary in South Africa, and her mother's sister, Anna V. S. Mitchell, did relief work in France during World War I and afterwards among refugees in Istanbul.

She was co-author, with Mary Marvin Breckinridge Patterson, of Olivia's African Diary: Cape Town to Cairo, 1932, a record of their trip throughout Africa after college, which was published in 1980.

In the 1940s, Hatch worked with the League of Women Voters, City Club (Albany), Race Relations group and the Red Cross Speakers Bureau.

In Lenox, Massachusetts, in the 1960s, she volunteered as a reader for Recording for the Blind, and helped to entertain young artists in conjunction with the Berkshire Music Center.