About Us

High Points
The Basics
Our Staff
History
Mission Statement
Governance

High Points

Stories published by the Yale Alumni Magazine in the past several years have been covered on the front page of the Wall Street Journal and the front page and opinion pages of the New York Times.

We publish original work by outstanding writers. Tom Wolfe, Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham, National Book Award winners Julia Glass and Andrew Solomon, and New York Times Sunday Review editor Sam Tanenhaus have all appeared in our pages. We also publish work by first-class writers whose names aren’t as well known (yet).

We’ve won two gold awards from Folio:, the trade magazine of the magazine industry, since 2004. In 2012, in the CASE national alumni magazine competition, we won a “Grand Gold” for best article published. The “Grand Gold” is an optional award that the judges rarely give; the previous one was given in 2006.

The Basics

The print version of the Yale Alumni Magazine is published bimonthly and distributed to more than 135,000 alumni of Yale—nearly all the alumni for whom Yale has viable mailing addresses. Some 5,000 faculty and staff also receive the magazine.

The magazine’s archives are available online at yalealumnimagazine.com, where we also publish several blogs that keep alumni up to date with happenings on campus and with Yale alumni news.

To contact the editors, to advertise, or to donate, go to Contact.

Our Staff

Kathrin Day Lassila ’81, editor
Mark Alden Branch ’86, executive editor
Ellen Z. Cole, alumni notes & school notes editor
Peggy Edersheim Kalb ’86, senior editor
Bruce Fellman, contributing writer
Jeanine Dunn, art director

Alison Wehrle, advertising sales manager

Theresa Holder, operations manager

The Yale Alumni Magazine is honored to have Laura R. Handman ’73, Esq., as Media Law Adviser and and Greg Zorthian ’75 as Publishing Advisers.

This website was designed in collaboration with Andy Pressman, of Rumors.

History

The Yale Alumni Magazine was founded as the Yale Alumni Weekly in 1891 by the student editors of the Yale Daily News. In the first issue, its founders declared that the publication was to be “run exclusively for the benefit of the graduates.” It was to “serve as an organ for the expression of graduate opinion upon topics concerning the welfare and interest of Yale” and to “act as a bond between the Alumni themselves and between the Alumni and the University.”

After a few years, the Daily News sold the new publication to two alumni, who ran it privately until 1909. In that year, the Yale Publishing Association was founded as publisher of the Weekly, governed by a nonprofit corporation “formed to hold [the YPA] in trust for the Yale graduates at large.” In 1937, the Alumni Board of Yale incorporated the nonprofit Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., to take over publication of what was soon renamed the Yale Alumni Magazine. In July 2015, Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., and Yale University agreed that the magazine would become a department of Yale, though Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., continues to exist and its board continues to shepherd the magazine and ensure its journalistic quality

Mission Statement

The magazine shall be a principal means of communication among alumni, the Yale University community, and others interested in Yale.

The magazine should impartially explore the achievements, issues, and problems of the University—of its administration, faculty, and student body—in order to convey a complete, fair, and accurate understanding of Yale today. In addition, the magazine shall record news of the alumni, providing them with a continued sense of belonging to the University.

In all that it does, the Yale Alumni Magazine should strive for high standards of excellence in editorial content and design and seek to advance the long-term best interests of the University and the alumni. It should inform and inspire its diverse and ever-evolving readership, moving its readers to remain intellectually engaged with the University. The magazine should evoke Yale as it was in the past, portray Yale in all its complexity today, and thoughtfully probe the opportunities and challenges confronting Yale in the future.