Jacques Steinberg

Jacques Steinberg is Senior Vice President for Higher Education and Communications at Say Yes to Education and its Weiss Institute initiative, and a former National Education Correspondent at The New York Times.

Among Steinberg’s responsibilities at Say Yes are to build and curate a network of private college and university partners that offer scholarships up to the value of full tuition to eligible Say Yes Scholars. He also leads Say Yes’ strategic communications.

Say Yes is a national nonprofit that partners with communities to help them make a college or other post-secondary scholarship available to every public high school graduate. Say Yes also works with communities to help them create a pathway of milestones toward post-secondary readiness, beginning before kindergarten, as well as to offer families academic, social-emotional and health-and-wellness supports. In 2017, Say Yes launched the Weiss Institute to help communities expand their capacity to support young people along the developmental pathway from early childhood to adult success.

Steinberg is the author of “The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College,” a New York Times best-seller that was first published in 2002. The book was reissued with a new Afterword in 2012. He also authored "You are an Ironman: How Six Weekend Warriors Chased Their Dream of Finishing the World’s Toughest Triathlon."

Before joining Say Yes in 2013, Jacques was a journalist at The Times for nearly 25 years, most recently as its Senior Editor for Education Initiatives. At The Times, he edited The Choice, the Times’ college admissions and financial aid blog, which he created for the paper in spring 2009. He also conceived and led the programming for the first-ever New York Times College Life Fair, staged in Chicago in May 2012, which attracted more than 6,000 students.

That same year he led conferences on American college admissions in New Delhi, Shanghai, Taipei, Hong Kong and Singapore for The Times global edition. He continues to speak on college admissions to parent groups and at conferences of college counselors.

Jacques received the Fred M. Hechinger Grand Prize for Education Reporting from the Education Writers Association in 1998 for a year-long series reported from inside a New York City third grade classroom. He received a Bachelor’s Degree from Dartmouth College, where he majored in history.