Mary Alice Williams (born March 12, 1949) is a pioneering journalist and broadcast executive who broke gender barriers by becoming the first female Prime Time anchor of a network news division and first woman to hold the rank of Vice President of a news division.
In addition to CNN, she has also served as anchor at many prominent networks, including PBS, Discovery, and NBC.
Williams was educated at the Convent of the Visitation and began working as a reporter for KSTP-TV as a high school student.
During college she filed reports for KSTP and the Chicago Bureau of NBC News on topics such as political assassinations, women's liberation, and anti-war movement.
In June 2014, following her first marriage, to Mark Haefeli, a CNN producer, she married Dr. Julian Decter, a hematologic oncologist at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York.
In 1982, Williams was appointed Vice president, becoming one of the highest ranking female executives in American television.
[5] For WNET, In the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks, she wrote and hosted a 3-hour PBS special Reaching Out to Heal.
She also hosted a companion program to Bill Moyers' On Our Own Terms, about death and dying, which aired in Fall 2000 on PBS.
Williams has produced and hosted programming for next generation platforms including interactive television and web-based journalism.
Prior to joining CNN in 1979, Williams was a reporter and anchor at WNBC-TV, the NBC flagship station in New York.
Williams went to WNBC from WPIX in New York where, at age 23, she served as executive producer of news programming.