A Career Reporter
Prior to joining CNN in 1979, Williams was a reporter and anchor at WNBC-TV, the NBC flagship station in New York. As special assignment correspondent there, she covered the 1974 and 1978 Senate elections and the 1976 Democratic convention and presidential election. She joined WNBC in 1974. Williams went to WNBC from WPIX in New York, where, at age 23, she served as executive producer of news programming. Previously she was executive producer at KSTP-TV in Minneapolis, Minn., where she started her career as a reporter at age 18.

Mary Alice Williams has made appearances on top-rated national television programs, including Nightline, CNN's Crossfire, The Tonight Show, The Tom Snyder Show and Murphy Brown.

From 1993 to 1999 Williams was a trustee of the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation. She now serves on its national board of advisers. She has served as broadcast chair for Women in Communications and mass media chair for the National Council of Women. She also was a member of the board of trustees at Fordham University.

Numerous Awards
Williams has received 12 honorary doctorates for her outstanding contributions to journalism and television. In addition, she has received numerous awards, including a national Emmy Award as anchor of NBC Nightly News during the Romanian revolution in 1989; a Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award for her Religion & Ethics News Weekly feature on the ethics of saving profoundly premature infants (1999); an American Medical Association's Freddy Award for her television short on a pediatric cardiology team's rescue operation in Guatemala (1996); and the Exceptional Merit Media Award from the National Women's Political Caucus and the Ellis Island Medal of Honor for her humanitarian and professional contributions to America (1995).

Personal History
Williams was born in Minneapolis, Minn. She received a B.A. in English and mass communications from Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. She is the mother of three daughters, Alice Ann born in 1990, and twins Sara Mary and Laura Abigail born in 1992. She spends lots of time on soccer and softball fields and is active in community affairs.