Lylah M. Alphonse

Lylah M. Alphonse was born in Princeton, New Jersey, the oldest child of Dr. Gerard A. Alphonse, a Haitian electrical engineer, inventor and research scientist, and Tehmina M. Alphonse,[1] a Parsi restauranteur from India.[2] She attended Princeton Day School, graduating in 1990.[3]

A graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University,[4] Alphonse was inducted to the Newhouse School's Alumni Hall of Fame in 2000.[5]

In 1994, Alphonse began working as an editor at The Boston Globe in Boston, where she eventually became a member of the newspaper's Sunday magazine staff.[6] She also wrote frequently for their Travel,[7] Food,[8] National & Foreign News, and Living/Arts[9] sections. She has also been Consulting Editor for the Fezana Journal,[10] Managing Editor at Work It, Mom!,[11] and Senior Editor and Writer at Yahoo.com,[12] where she covered news, parenting trends, health, women's issues,[13] and politics and interviewed First Lady Michelle Obama,[14] presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett,[15] and others.

She became the Managing Editor for Special Reports at U.S. News & World Report in June 2013, and was promoted to Managing Editor for News a year later.[16][17] After a brief tenure as Senior Vice President of Laurel Strategies, a strategic communications firm based in Washington, D.C.,[18] she rejoined The Boston Globe as the editor of their Rhode Island bureau in October 2020.[19]

Alphonse formerly wrote the blog The 36-Hour Day blog[20] and Write. Edit. Repeat.,[21] is the author of "Triumph Over Discrimination: The Life Story of Farhang Mehr"[22] (ISBN 0-9709937-0-6), and has contributed articles to Our Times (5th edition, Bedford Books, 1998) and Interactions: A Thematic Reader (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1999).[23] She is a frequent guest on GBH-TV news shows[24] in Boston.