This page is no longer being updated and remains online for informational and historical purposes only. The information is accurate as of the last page update.
For questions about page contents, contact the Communications Division.
When asked what she likes to read, Marilyn Balamaci’s first response isn’t the title of the John Galsworthy book on her bedside table or mystery she took to the beach. ”The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post,” she says promptly. Not unusual from someone who has wanted to be a reporter since the sixth grade, when she was recruited as coeditor of her school newspaper.
Balamaci ’74, senior editor for Family Circle, has spent most of her career as a magazine reporter and editor.
A Spanish and psychology graduate, Balamaci drew on her academic background for her first job.
“I worked in Caracas, Venezuela, for two years as a reporter for an English language newspaper,” she says. “I owe a lot of my love for Latin America to two professors: Richard Sharpless (professor of history) and Joseph Arboleda (now associate professor emeritus of foreign languages and literatures).”
Later, Balamaci spent several years in Brazil in a similar reporting position. She returned to the States in 1981 and for a short time wrote for People and Time magazines. Then her career path took an unconventional detour.
”I took off sailing for four years on a 35-foot sailboat,” Balamaci says. ”I got to travel at five-miles-an-hour to some interesting, although not exotic, places.”
Back on land in 1985, Balamaci was hired as a contract correspondent for People magazine. She worked out of the Chicago and later the Washington bureaus where she wrote about everything from the Oliver North trial to U.S. Senator Alan K. Simpson to murder cases. She contributed to a magazine-wide effort to capture, in 24 hours, the various aspects of AIDS across the country.
In 1992 Balamachi was named deputy chief of correspondents and later chief of correspondents. From her offices in New York City, Balamaci oversaw People magazine’s seven bureaus, about 40 correspondents, and 100 freelance writers. Among the stories that broke under her watch was the Oklahoma City bombing. Since People is a weekly publication, the work pace was tense.
”After four years, I wasn’t enjoying the intensity that I had craved when I was younger so I decided to step back and change course,” Balmaci says. At Family Circle, Balamaci is one of several senior editors. Her responsibilities include editing the regular section, “Women Who Make a Difference.” She is especially proud of her role in coordinating a large project on bone marrow transplants. It included articles, a call for readers to lobby for research funding, and a national bone marrow donation drive.
Balamaci believes Lafayette prepared her well for the twists and turns of her magazine career. “Being in the first class of women at an all-male school was one of the best experiences I could have had,” she says. “When you’re one of three women in a class with 20 men, it can be intimidating. I learned to face the world. It allowed me to go out and do whatever I wanted to.”
Marilyn Balamaci ’74 is senior editor of Family Circle.