Mary Alice Williams

As one of the primary architects behind the design of the first worldwide television network, Williams oversaw the construction of CNN’s New York Bureau at the World Trade Center prior to the launch of Cable News Network (CNN) in 1980. She served as New York Bureau Chief, overseeing the planning and operation of the network’s second largest bureau with responsibility for seven hours of original programming per day. She was also one of the channel’s principal anchors. In 1982, Williams was appointed Vice president, becoming one of the highest ranking female executives in American television. She was a vital member of CNN’s political anchor team, co-hosting Inside Politics with Bernard Shaw.

She became the anchor of NJTV News starting on July 1, 2014, replacing Mike Schneider. After about six years in that role, she announced on the April 27, 2020 broadcast of the show that she would be leaving NJTV. When making that announcement, she had been absent since March 13, 2020 to help care for some of her family members who were having health problems.

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. As host of Hallmark’s weekly True North program on personal ethics, Williams earned the 2001 Gracie Allen Award and the 2001 Donald McGannon Ethics in Media Award. Her 90-minute PBS special on alcoholism and addiction, Within Reach, along with her continuing work as a PBS contributing correspondent and anchor on Religion & Ethics Newsweekly have established Williams as a significant reporter on broad issues of ethics.

She is an actress, known for The Siege (1998), Murphy Brown (1988) and Newswatch (1980). She has been married to Dr.

One of the highest rated documentaries ever broadcast on Lifetime Television, Picture What Women Do, about women, work and the American family was written and hosted by Williams. That program won the 1995 Exceptional Merit Media Award given by the National Women’s Political Caucus. Williams has continued to be a leading voice on the impact of public policy on the American family. In 1995, she appeared in 38 television spots for ABC affiliate stations about women’s health issues as part of Women’s Health Alliance and Hearst TV. Also for Hearst, she hosted a 40-part Our Show series about issues facing the baby-boom generation. Williams also hosted States of Faith, an NBC Television special on religion in America.

From 1993 to 1999, Williams was a Trustee of the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation. She has served as Broadcast Chair for Women in Communications and Mass Media Chair for the National Council of Women. She was also a member of the Board of Trustees at Fordham University from 1987 to 1993. She is currently a board member of the Women in Communications Foundation and an advisor to the New York Foundling.

Williams was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She received a B.A. in English and Mass Communications from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. She is the mother of three daughters: Alice Ann, born 1990 and twins Sara Mary and Laura Abigail, born 1992. In June 2014, she married Dr. Julian Decter, a hematologic oncologist at Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York.

In 1989, Williams moved to NBC News where she co-hosted Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow, a series of news magazine specials which were controversial, since they included dramatic reenactments similar to the television show, Unsolved Mysteries; substitute anchored NBC Nightly News; and co-hosted Sunday Today. In 1990, Williams was one of a group of NBC News personnel who won a News and Documentary Emmy award in the category of Outstanding General Coverage of a Single Breaking News Story (Segments) for "Romanian Revolution Coverage" on NBC Nightly News and Weekend Nightly News. She shared this award with fellow anchors Tom Brokaw, Garrick Utley, John Cochran, Deborah Norville, and Katie Couric, and correspondents Dennis Murphy, George Lewis, Arthur Kent, and Tom Aspell. During her tenure with NBC from 1989–1993, she also anchored Sunday Today, NBC News Special Reports, and NBC’s extended coverage of Desert Storm: War in the Gulf. Williams was a frequent anchor and correspondent for NBC Nightly News, Sunrise and The Today Show.

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, she covered the 1974 and 1978 United States 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, Minnesota where she started her career as a reporter at age 18.

Mary Alice Williams was born on March 12, 1949 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.