Yale’s athletic department pushed out a veteran administrator as part of a plan that to hire a woman who was in a romantic relationship with another female administrator, according to a new report.
According to Fox News, Yale’s Executive Deputy Director/Chief Operating Officer of Athletics Ann-Marie Guglieri and Deputy Director of Athletics Mary Berdo bought a house in Milford, Connecticut, in 2018, prior to Berdo being hired by Yale in 2019 to serve under Athletic Director Victoria Chun.
Fox reported that unnamed Yale employees said a romantic relationship exists between Guglieri and Berdo.
The trio had all worked together before in the athletic department of Colgate University.
The former employees said that a former Yale athletic department administrator was forced out so Berdo could have a job.
Although the relationship between Berdo and Guglieri does not break Yale’s rules, a former Yale coach said it was “totally unprofessional” that two department officials “are in a relationship with each other.”
Two former Yale employees said the athletics department was not able to hire both women at once, which, Fox said, led to a plan to make room.
Fox said it “learned that a former athletics department administrator reluctantly accepted a voluntary retirement package, and then Berdo was hired shortly thereafter.”
“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 department’s front office prior to Berdo’s hiring,” Fox reported, citing a former Yale athletics employee it did not name.
“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 men’s hockey head coach Keith Allain said the account Fox related aligned with what he had been told, but did not comment further.
Fox News said it sought comment from Guglieri, Berdo, and Chun but received no response.
Allain recently alleged to Yale President Maurie McInnis that Chun has created a “toxic environment” for the university’s sports teams.
A Yale women’s track and field athlete has told me she recently quit her team due to a “toxic culture” under AD Vicky Chun, as more dissent from within the athletic department leaks. https://t.co/1vTCmDYgE9
— Jackson Thompson (@JackThompsonFOX) March 31, 2026
“I am writing to you at the urging of several head coaches in our Athletic Department. They told me that you were soliciting feedback from a few coaches regarding extending the contract of our athletic director, and are concerned, that with the culture of fear that permeates the athletic department, you will not receive candid feedback,” Allain wrote before he left Yale.
“Vicky’s singular talent is self-promotion and has created a toxic environment within the department where she is insulated by a cadre of administrators whose main task seems to be silencing any dissent,” the letter continued.
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