Thomas Fuller ’92

Fuller, whose mother is French, grew up in New York but made yearly trips to France, which sparked his enthusiasm for living abroad. When it came time to apply to college, he wanted both his studies and his personal relationships to take on a global aspect—that’s why his only application was to AUP. He made friends from Italy, Spain, China, Lebanon, Singapore and Slovenia, treasuring everything he learned from them about the world through countless dinners and study trips. “I think you'd be hard-pressed to get that anywhere else,” he says. “At AUP, you're in the middle of it—you're walking the streets of history. It's not for people who want to sit in a white room and read books.”

Seeking more global adventures, Fuller considered becoming a pilot—but an AUP professor, Mark Hunter, lit within him a passion for journalism that would only intensify with time. He interned in subscriptions at the International Herald Tribune in Paris throughout his degree and the day after graduation began working at the paper full-time.

In what he calls "an appetizer” to his career, Fuller took time off from the Tribune to go on a year-long round-the-world motorcycle trip, shipping the bike across oceans when necessary. His travels through Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand sparked a curiosity that would shape his career, preparing him for his next role as a foreign correspondent for Asia Times in Bangkok.

Fuller then returned to the Tribune—now The New York Times International Edition—in Malaysia and went on to report from 40 countries. This included spending 16 years traveling across countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Burma as a Southeast Asia correspondent. Fuller describes it as "the best job in journalism," emphasizing the region's diversity.

On this wide-ranging beat, Fuller witnessed countless defining moments in history. In one infamous episode in 2010, he was interviewing a renegade general in Thailand when the general was assassinated by a sniper—the bullet whizzing just past Fuller. He also covered the 2015 election in Myanmar, which saw a poet improbably beat a powerful military general to win a seat in Parliament.

After two decades abroad, Fuller returned to the US in 2016, embarking on a new chapter as the San Francisco Bureau Chief for The New York Times. His beat remained just as tumultuous, covering wildfires, the fallout from the 2016 election, the Covid-19 pandemic, divisions within liberal politics, and homelessness.

These days, if you look at the front page of The New York Times, there’s a good chance you’ll see Fuller’s work. As a Page One Correspondent, he crafts articles and headlines that synthesize and contextualize the world’s most significant events. Fuller also enjoys writing “enterprise” stories—longform investigations on chosen topics, from public housing in France to his favorite fruit, durian, the notoriously pungent “king of fruits” from Southeast Asia. Whatever the form, Fuller has never feared the blank page. “I've never heard the term ‘writer's block’ among my colleagues at the Times,” he says. “Probably because we'd be fired if we had it.”