Laura Pappano is an award-winning journalist, community leader and author of Inside School Turnarounds (2010), co-author of Playing With the Boys (2008) and author of The Connection Gap (2001). Laura is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, The Hechinger Report and The Women’s Review of Books.
A former education columnist for The Boston Globe and Harvard Education Letter contributor, her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, The Boston Globe Magazine and elsewhere. Her piece, “How Big Time Sports Ate College Life,” originally published in the NY Times, is included in The Norton Sampler: Short Essays for Composition (8th edition, 2013; 9th edition, 2017).
Laura moderates education forums. (SXSW.edu, MSNBC’s “Education Nation” town hall, and the 92nd Street Y, among others). She has been a TV and radio guest, including on The Diane Rehm Show on NPR.
She is founder of The New Haven Student Journalism Project, which operates through Yale University’s Office of New Haven and State Affairs. Yale undergrads mentor New Haven Public School students in grades 3-8 to produce The East Rock Record, distributed throughout the city and to state legislators.
Laura was a 2018-2019 Poynter Fellow at Yale. She is writer-in-residence at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College. Laura formerly edited the FairGameNews blog, now an archive. She is the board chair of Long Wharf Theatre and serves on the board of the Yale Field Hockey Association. A 1984 Yale grad, Laura was goalkeeper for the 1980 Ivy League Championship Field Hockey team. She bikes, runs and plays USTA tennis. She lives in New Haven, CT.