Peter Salovey

President of Yale University Scholars

Prior to becoming president, Salovey served as the provost of Yale University from 2008 to 2013. As provost, Salovey facilitated strategic planning and initiatives such as enhancing career development and mentoring opportunities for all Yale faculty members; promoting faculty diversity; creating the Office of Academic Integrity; establishing the University-wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct; developing the West Campus; and overseeing the University’s budget during the global financial crisis.

Other leadership roles at Yale have included: chair of the Department of Psychology from 2000 to 2003; dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 2003 and 2004; and dean of Yale College from 2004 to 2008.

After receiving an A.B. (psychology) and A.M. (sociology) from Stanford University in 1980 with departmental honors and university distinction, Salovey earned three degrees at Yale in psychology: an M.S. (1983), M.Phil. (1984), and Ph.D. (1986). Since joining the Yale faculty in 1986, he has studied the connection between human emotion and health behavior, and played key roles in multiple Yale programs including:  the Health, Emotion, and Behavior Laboratory, which Salovey founded and is now called the Center for Emotional Intelligence; the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS; and the Cancer Prevention and Control Research Program. He currently holds in the Schools of Management and Public Health, the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, and the Sociology Department.

Salovey has authored or edited over a dozen books translated into eleven languages and published hundreds of journal articles and essays, focused primarily on human emotion and health behavior. With John D. Mayer, he developed a broad framework called “Emotional Intelligence,” the theory that just as people have a wide range of intellectual abilities, they also have a wide range of measurable emotional skills that profoundly affect their thinking and action.

In addition to teaching and mentoring scores of graduate students, Salovey has won both the William Clyde DeVane Medal for Distinguished Scholarship and Teaching in Yale College and the Lex Hixon ’63 Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Social Sciences. He has received honorary degrees from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (2014), National Tsing Hua University (2014), and Harvard University (2015). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the National Academy of Medicine in 2013.

Salovey and his wife, Marta Elisa Moret, have lived in New Haven since they arrived as graduate students more than 30 years ago. Moret, a 1984 graduate of the Yale School of Public Health, is the president of Urban Policy Strategies, LLC, which provides program evaluation and technical assistance to community-based health organizations. Moret is also active with the Association of Yale Alumni and has served on its board of governors. She previously held positions in the Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy, the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, and the Hispanic Health Council. Moret was the deputy commissioner for the Connecticut Department of Social Services from 1991 to 1994.