Raphael Sagalyn was born and raised in Western Massachusetts and attended Tufts University and the Radcliffe (now Columbia) Publishing Procedures Course. He worked for Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, Beacon Press and Little, Brown before moving to Washington, DC to work for The New Republic.  He started the agency in 1980 and his first author was Jim Trelease who had self-published a pamphlet extolling the virtues and pleasures of reading aloud to children and students. Penguin released THE READ ALOUD HANDBOOK in 1982 and it was an immediate bestseller after "Dear Abby" called it "the best lifetime gift a parent can give to a child."

Shannon O'Neill, Director of Domestic Rights, is a native of the Washington region. She has a Masters of Arts in Writing from Johns Hopkins University and graduated with honors from Dartmouth College.  She worked for Island Press and Politics & Prose Bookstore before coming to the agency in 2007.

Lauren Clark handles foreign rights for Sagalyn, as well as permissions and queries. She came to the agency in 2010 from the University of Cincinnati, where she earned a master's in creative writing and fielded submissions for the Cincinnati Review. Lauren also interned for Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Cincinnati and for the Elaine P. English and Ross Yoon agencies in DC.