Mary Ann Lauricella’s distinguished career as a communicator includes decades of community volunteer leadership in her hometown of Buffalo, New York. She is an award-winning newspaper journalist who went on to serve in government and corporate positions before founding her own consulting business, Lauricella Public Relations Co.

Mary Ann was a feature writer and television critic for The Buffalo News and won 9 Page One Awards for journalism excellence. When named associate commissioner for public affairs for the New York State Motor Vehicles Department in 1982, she became the first woman to achieve a commissioner rank in the department’s history. Her STOP-DWI media campaign against drunken driving won national and international awards.

While she served as an administrative vice president at the former Empire of America Bank, a national savings bank, she directed its national and regional communications, and its community and charitable giving programs.

A dedicated community leader, she serves as chair emeritus of the Western New York Public Broadcasting (WNED) Board of Trustees, is on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the Better Business Bureau of Upstate New York, and is secretary of the Board of Trustees of Christ the King Seminary of the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo.

In 2002, she was elected to the board of Restoring Sight International (RSI), a not-for-profit organization based in Boston, MA. RSI is dedicated to preventing avoidable blindness by bringing modern eye care to underserved regions of the world.

Canisius College, her alma mater, has honored her with its LaSalle Medal and its Distinguished Alumni Award. Mary Ann was the first woman to receive the Canisius Board of Regents Distinguished Citizen Achievement Award. Among her other honors is the Athena Award, a national recognition for professional excellence. She holds a national Telly Award for a program about the Pew Charitable Trust’s community forum on Social Security in Buffalo, New York, for which she was co-coordinator.