Understanding New Haven with Michael Morand

Mandatory training for incoming members of Nonprofit Board Fellows and Social Impact Consulting Club.

Michael Morand is the City Historian of the City of New Haven and Director of Community Engagement for Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.


Michael holds a bachelor and a master of divinity degree from Yale. He has been in the senior administration of Yale for three decades, with earlier roles including service as the university’s deputy chief communications officer and associate vice president for New Haven and state affairs.

He is currently chair of the Friends of the Grove Street Cemetery and serves on the boards of the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven and the W. E. B. Du Bois Museum Foundation (USA/Ghana). Michael is the author of a chapter in Yale and Slavery: A History (2024) and has been a leader for the research of that book and the Yale and Slavery Research Project. He is co-curator of the related exhibition, Shining Light on Truth: New Haven, Yale, and Slavery, at the New Haven Museum (from February through summer 2024).

His prior public service includes two terms as alder for the first ward in New Haven, as a member of the State of Connecticut Judicial Selection Commission, and as chair of the board of the New Haven Free Public Library as well as its affiliated nonprofit foundation. Michael is currently a mayoral appointee on the City of New Haven’s Dixwell Community House Advisory Board.

Michael previously served on the board of the national Urban Libraries Council. He also has served in the past as president of the boards of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce, and the Community Soup Kitchen board and as vice president of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, and on other civic boards, including the Connecticut Conference of Independent Colleges, Mary Wade Home, the Regional Workforce Development Board, and Squash Haven.

He is the recipient of a special Elm and Ivy Award in recognition of exemplary leadership and initiative in developing and strengthening the collaborative relationships between the New Haven and Yale University communities. Other honors include the New Haven Free Public Library Webster Award for Distinguished Service, a Community Leadership Award from the New Haven Pride Center, as well as awards from Columbus House, JUNTA for Progressive Action, and the New Haven St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee, and a fellowship from the New England Foundation for the Arts.

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Co-hosted with: Social Impact Consulting Club

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