Meet Louise Story ’03, ’06 MBA, news industry leader, journalist, and lecturer at Yale School of Management. In this Women’s History Month Alumni Identity Spotlight, Story discusses how embodying change empowered her to advance inclusivity.
This feature is part of a series focused on amplifying the voices of alumni who are making an impact today and illuminating how the identities we bring to Yale transform both our community and the world.
The freedom and support that the Yale administration allowed The Yale Daily News to have for independent journalism created an environment in which I cemented my journalism skills. I'll always remember cracking open some big stories there, like a new financial aid plan that had not yet been announced. When we were about to go to print with that story, Yale's Admissions Dean (who had not provided me the information) cautioned me about putting out possibly wrong information, but I knew we had the details correct, so we published. The next day, that Dean called me and congratulated me, saying he was impressed I had gotten the scoop.
I identify as a progress-pursuer. That is, as a person put on this planet to help make the world a better place and to support others in doing so. I felt an urgency at Yale even as a student to push Yale to be more inclusive. I wrote a lengthy enterprise story at the YDN in which I interviewed scores of talented high school students across the country and found that many did not know that Yale had financial aid. This was a time period when there was very little economic diversity at Yale. I was proud to see Yale follow my article with greater admissions outreach across the country and with reforms to make Yale's education more accessible to lower-income students.
I always enjoy connecting with Yale alumni and I encounter them in many places. I hope Yale alumni will continue looking for ways their work can help many communities.
Always remember where you came from and what matters to you. Keep core values close to your heart and periodically check-in with yourself on whether your work and the time you spend on things is aligned with the impact you want to have on the world.
Louise is a news industry leader focused on great journalism, digital transformation, business growth, and diversity and inclusion. She has been a senior leader at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and she has worked in all parts of the media business. While at The Journal, she served as the highest-ranking woman running news coverage and was also the first female Chief Technology Officer of a major U.S. news brand. She wrote and produced “The Kleptocrats,” a feature-length documentary that aired on the BBC and is now on Amazon and Apple. She had led prize-winning journalism teams and, in her own work at The New York Times, she wrote articles that led to 3 major fraud settlements including her discovery of the 1MDB scandal. She teaches an MBA course about race and money in America at The Yale School of Management. She is currently co-writing a book about the Black-white wealth gap.
