Chris R. Vaccaro is a media executive, professor, and author from Long Island. The great-grandson of Italian immigrants from Sicily, he has been a staunch advocate for preserving Italian heritage and culture through several organizations, including the Italian American Baseball Foundation, the Italian American Heritage Society of Long Island, the National Italian American Foundation and the Italian American Sports Hall of Fame.
He is the Vice President/ General Manager of Sports at Quidd, the digital collectibles marketplace, and the Senior Editorial Advisor of the World Baseball Network. Vaccaro is a professor and the Director of Graduate Journalism at Hofstra University’s Lawrence Herbert School of Communication. An Emmy Award and Murrow Award winner, he is formally the Vice President of Digital News of News 12 Networks and was the Editor-in-Chief of The Topps Company (yes, baseball cards!) and an editor at the New York Daily News and AOL. His work has been published in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, and many others. He is the author of 10 books and has produced eight documentaries, including a three-part series on Team Italy’s journey to the 2023 World Baseball Classic.
A community advocate and historian, Vaccaro is the President of the Suffolk County Sports Hall of Fame, President/Founder of the Sachem Alumni Association, President/Founder of the Sachem Education Foundation, Editorial Director of the Lake Ronkonkoma Historical Society, National At-Large Director of the Society of Professional Journalists, and a past president and trustee of the Press Club of Long Island.
He was inducted into the Long Island Journalism Hall of Fame in 2022 and the Sachem Athletic Hall of Fame in 2021. In addition to being a 40-under-40 selection by the Long Island Business News and a Long Island Power List honoree, he has won two Emmy Awards (was nominated for 11), nine Murrow Awards and has won more than 150 honors in journalism and communications.
Vaccaro, who studied journalism at Hofstra and public policy at Stony Brook, is pursuing his doctorate in leadership studies from LSU. He lives in Lake Grove, NY, with his wife Theresa and three children, Hunter, Thompson, and Stella.