People: Mary Tunney
Associate Director, Media Relations
Mary Tunney came to BU last year after a decade-long career as a TV news producer in New York, Washington, D.C., and, finally, Boston. “Ultimately, I wanted to move back to the Boston area—I grew up here,” she says. “And I always knew that if I left broadcast news, media relations was the next step, because it’s in the same realm.”
For most of her career, Tunney produced award-winning segments for Dateline NBC. She also covered two Olympics for NBC, winning an Emmy for coverage of the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.
Now, as Media Relations associate director, she uses that experience—and her extensive list of contacts in the industry—to place BU stories and experts in TV and radio news. For example, shortly after Tunney arrived here, she pitched Admissions Executive Director Kelly Walter to a former colleague now at The Today Show. The resulting segment (see samples) “was a great piece,” Tunney says. “From our perspective it couldn’t have put BU in a better light.”
Tunney’s job has been made easier by the addition of a studio with a remote camera, located at One Sherborn Street, for use in satellite interviews. “So if CNBC calls and they need somebody in 20 minutes," says Tunney, “we can make it happen.”
An ardent traveler, Tunney is planning trips to Ireland and Hawaii, and spends much of her spare time on Martha’s Vineyard.
