Lucy Kaylin: Feeding Your Intellectual Curiosity
On the Womenheard: Changemakers podcast, host Georgia Galanoudis speaks with Lucy Kaylin, the 2025 Matrix Honoree and editorial director at Hearst Magazines, the world’s largest lifestyle publisher. Before that, Kaylin served as an executive editor at Marie Claire and deputy editor—and then editor-in-chief—at O, The Oprah Magazine. During her seven years at the top of O, the magazine boasted one of the largest monthly magazine circulations and was named Advertising Age’s Magazine of the Year.
Here are some highlights to look forward to in the conversation.
CULTURE AT THE CENTER OF THE HOUSEHOLD
Kaylin says many of her childhood experiences set the stage for the career she has today. She grew up in a family full of “culturally astute, omnivorous people”: Her dad is a writer, her sister’s a writer and editor, and her mom, though not a writer, has a real appreciation for big ideas and great writing. All of this, Kaylin says, was a “wonderful kind of stew for a person who wants to hone a point of view” about the world. She realized from a young age that to have a seat at the table, she needed to be intellectually curious to form opinions that mattered. This connects to her work now, she notes, because a brand voice needs to stand for something in order for people to believe in it.
READING EVERYTHING
Because of the field Kaylin works in, she needs to consume all sorts of media. The happiest part of her week, she says, is weekend mornings, when she’s sitting in bed with an array of reading materials. She’ll read everything from her own magazine to The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic. She’ll gobble up memoirs and dive into smaller media sites. For her, it’s all about immersing herself in the world and connecting with different cultures, ideas, and storytelling, all of which continue to shape her point of view.
DIVING DEEPER
“To be a good magazine person, you need to have a lot of interest in the world: how it’s changing and what the trends are,” Kaylin says. Her idea of fun is drawing out stories from other people and writing about their experiences. For example, in the U.S., the number of Catholic nuns is dwindling. Even though Kaylin didn’t grow up religious, her curiosity got the best of her and it led her to travel across the country, meeting incredible women, which ultimately became the foundation for her book, For the Love of God. What she uncovered surprised her: Despite coming from very different worlds, these women shared many of the same core values as her. At its heart, it was a story of feminism, a community of women helping and empowering each other. Kaylin says it all circles back to having the curiosity to dive deeper and uncover the stories that matter.
Thank you to Lucy Kaylin for joining us! For the full interview, listen to NYWICI’s WomenHeard podcast.
