EXCLUSIVE: Two of Yale’s top athletic officials bought a house together a year before one of them was hired by the university, a deed obtained by Fox News Digital shows. Former colleagues have alleged the two officials are in a romantic relationship, and alleged that a former administrator was pushed to retire to vacate a position for one of the partners.
Yale’s Executive Deputy Director/Chief Operating Officer of Athletics Ann-Marie Guglieri and Deputy Director of Athletics Mary Berdo, who are the second and third top-ranked positions in the athletic department under Athletic Director Victoria Chun, purchased a house together in Milford, Connecticut, in June 2018, the deed shows. Berdo was then hired by in April 2019.
Chun, Guglieri and Berdo previously worked together at Colgate Universitys athletic department. Yales then-president appointed Chun as athletics director in February 2018, and she joined Yale in July 2018. Guglieri started that same month.
Two former employees of the Yale athletics department have alleged that Guglieri and Berdo are in a romantic relationship. Additional former employees have alleged a former administrator was pressured to accept a voluntary retirement package, which then created an opening for Berdo.
Guglieri and Berdos relationship does not appear to violate Yales workplace policies, which state: “Staff are expected to avoid romantic or sexual relationships with employees and trainees for whom they have or might reasonably expect to have supervisory or reporting responsibilities.”
A Yale athletics organization chart obtained by Fox News Digital, created some time after 2019, shows that Berdo and Guglieri do not have a reporting or supervisory relationship with each other. Instead, both report directly to Chun.
Although the relationship does not violate Yale policy, one former Yale coach opined that it is “totally unprofessional” that two people with leadership roles in the Athletics Department “are in a relationship with each other.”
The former coach told Fox News Digital, on the condition of anonymity, that it was “well-known” in the department that Guglieri and Berdo were “a couple,” even though “they didnt make it obvious.” He said they “came as a packaged deal.”
A former Yale athletic administrator told Fox News Digital under the condition of anonymity that the relationship was “widely known” in the athletic department.
Two former employees said the athletics department could not increase its headcount to hire Berdo at the same time it hired Guglieri. But Fox News Digital learned that a former athletics department administrator reluctantly accepted a voluntary retirement package, and then Berdo was hired shortly thereafter.Â
The former senior associate athletic director was allegedly given “no choice” but to accept the voluntary retirement package in the fall of 2018, creating a vacancy in the departments front office prior to Berdos hiring, according to a former Yale Athletics employee with firsthand knowledge of the situation.
“A senior associate athletic director was called in in October of 2018 and was pressured to accept a retirement package, and this person had no choice but to take this retirement package and give 90-day notice, and just after the 90-day notice, Mary Berdo was hired,” the former employee said.
Former Yale mens hockey head coach Keith Allain told Fox News Digital that the former employees recollection of the pressured retirement and eventual hiring of Berdo is consistent with what he had been told by individuals within the athletics department. Allain declined further comment.
Sources with whom Fox News Digital spoke did not claim that Guglieri participated in the selection process for Berdo. But one
