Kathleen M. Rowe, former public relations manager for a national health care firm, has been appointed to the MIT News Office as assistant director for media relations.
Kenneth D. Campbell, director of the News Office, said that Ms. Rowe's primary responsibilities would involve working with News Office and MIT colleagues to develop and implement plans for gaining maximum publicity for MIT on high priority issues in national, regional and local print and broadcast media.
Her duties will include developing media contacts for special faculty projects, as well as seeking and writing newsworthy stories around the campus and working with colleagues to identify and contact news reporters interested in a wide range of MIT news.
As national public relations manager of New Medico Health Care System for five years, Ms. Rowe acted as spokesperson and supervised the work of six public relations firms involved with the nationwide group of head injury clinics owned by the firm, which has its headquarters in Lynn, Mass. She left last year to establish her own public relations business.
She also worked for two years with the Boston public relations firm, Nicolazzo and Associates, dealing with a number of major business and nonprofit organizations.
Ms. Rowe is a 1985 graduate of Cornell University,with a BS in communication arts and minors in psychology and business, where she received the Edward L. Bernays Primus Inter Pares Award. She worked for the Cornell University News Service for two years during college, researching, writing and editing news releases and tracking media coverage.
She is a member of the American Marketing Association, the Hastings Center for Ethics, the Boston Center for International Visitors and the Needham Art Association. She has held positions on the board of directors of the Scleroderma Association and with the Business Advisory Council of the Perkins School for the Blind's Project with Industry. Ms. Rowe lives in Needham with her husband, Matthew Elman.
Ms. Rowe succeeds to the position formerly held by Naomi F. Chase, assistant director from November, 1988 through January, 1992, when she resigned to focus on her writing career. Ms. Chase is the author of books of nonfiction and of poetry, most recently a book of poems, Waiting for the Messiah in Somerville, Mass., published by the Garden Street Press. Ms. Chase has been a consultant to the News Office since February, 1992, serving the Commission on Primary and Secondary Education and on various other projects. She will continue her consulting work through the end of the MIT academic year.
A version of this article appeared in the April 7, 1993 issue of MIT Tech Talk (Volume 37, Number 28).
