Alumni Profiles

Spotlight stories on alumni who are leading, innovating, and making a difference.

Catherine Zipf smiling, wearing striped shirt and dark sweater outdoors.

Preserving the History of Jim Crow Era Safe Havens

Architectural historian Catherine Zipf is building a database of Green Book sites.  

by Lydialyle Gibson

Portrait of Jeannie Suk Gersen, an elegantly dressed Korean American woman leaning against a stone archway.

Jeannie Suk Gersen of Harvard Law School, profiled by Lydialyle Gibson

Jeannie Suk Gersen on the law, trauma, and “the rhetoric of believing”

by Lydialyle Gibson

Photograph of a stout middle-aged woman seated at her desk, writing

Elizabeth Bangs Bryant

Brief life of an underappreciated arachnologist

by Reed Gochberg

Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Radhika Jones poses stylishly in a studio

Profile of Radhika Jones

Radhika Jones at the helm of Vanity Fair

by Marina N. Bolotnikova

A photograph of the border wall stretching toward a mountain in the distance

Photographer Morgan Smith's Images and Encounters at the Mexican Border

Photographer Morgan Smith ’60 documents life on the precarious precipice between Mexico and the United States.

by Lydialyle Gibson

Philanthropist Edwin Binney with Helen Willard, curator of the Harvard Theatre Collection

Edwin Binney, 3rd

Brief life of a philanthropic art collector: 1925-1986

by Madison U. Sowell

Shelby Meyerhoff's photographic self-portrait of her head and shoulders transformed with body paints into a blue-ringed octopus

Profile of body-paint artist Shelby Meyerhoff

Shelby Meyerhoff’s liminal, liberating body painting

by Lydialyle Gibson

Producer Jeff Schaffer sits between star Larry David (left) and another cast member on the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” set.

TV writer and producer Jeff Schaffer talks shop

TV writer and producer Jeff Schaffer on how to be funny

by Stuart Miller

David Roberts seated outdoors on a stone wall by the Charles River

Adventure writer Dave Roberts

David Roberts: A lifetime of adventures, risks, and rewards

by Nell Porter-Brown

At Home with Harvard: The Art of the Profile

A selection of our readers’ and writers’ favorite longform profiles

Michael Fabiano in the Associated Press newsroom

Making the 2020 Election Call

The AP’s Michael Fabiano on the 2020 election

by Jacob Sweet