Photo of the center's senior director Amanda Yarnell

Amanda Yarnell

Senior Director, Center for Health Communication, and Instructor, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Amanda joined Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2022 as Senior Director for its Center for Health Communication, where she is preparing public health leaders to communicate credible health information to an increasingly fragmented world. In that work she leverages two decades of experience in science and health journalism, media product development, and audience engagement. 

Prior to joining Harvard Chan, Amanda worked as a science journalist and newsroom leader at Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), an award-winning nonprofit science news outlet published by the American Chemical Society. Under Amanda’s leadership C&EN grew from a print magazine to a vibrant multichannel news operation used by more than 8 million people a year.  

Amanda currently serves on the advisory board of Drug Hunter, a nonprofit news startup that covers pharmaceutical discovery and development. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry from Johns Hopkins University and a Masters of Science in Chemistry from MIT.