biography

Laura Pappano is an award-winning journalist, author, and blogger who has written about education, social issues, politics and gender (especially in the context of sports) for more than 20 years. She was the only girl in her middle school industrial arts class (thanks to Title IX) and the only girl on her Danbury News-Times carrier league baseball team in Northwestern Connecticut. Laura became attuned to the charged intersection of education, sports, and equity issues when she stole second base during a baseball game and was told by both teams (that’s a lot of 13-year-old boys) to “GO BAAAACK!!!!” She didn’t – and scored a run instead.

Laura is the author of Inside School Turnarounds (2010), co-author of Playing With the Boys (2008), and author of The Connection Gap (2001). A former education columnist for The Boston Globe, Laura’s work has appeared in The New York Times Education Life section, The Harvard Education Letter, The Christian Science Monitor, The Huffington Post, The Boston Globe Magazine, Working Mother Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Nick Jr. Family Magazine, and The Washington Post, among other print and online publications.

She is writer-in-residence at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College, where she leads the Women’s Sports Leadership Project. As part of the project, Pappano participates in research on gender and sports with social scientists who are a lot smarter than she is. She and Allison Tracy, PhD presented results of their study, Ticket Office Sexism, at the 2010 World Conference on Women and Sport in Sydney. Pappano founded and edits the FairGameNews blog, which is both a journalism site and a vehicle for mentoring students and aspiring writers.

An active volunteer, Laura is on the board of the Long Wharf Theatre and is founder of The New Haven Student Journalism Project, which helps city students learn journalism skills and students in grades 2-8 at the Celentano Museum Academy in New Haven, CT, put out their own newspaper, The Celentano Sentinel. She also serves on the National Advisory Board of Dream Big!, an organization that serves urban girls. She is former chair of the West Suburban YMCA in Newton, Massachusetts, and has coached youth sports. A former goaltender for the Yale Field Hockey team, she now jogs, plays competitive tennis, and enjoys family touch football. She lives with her husband and three children in New Haven, CT.