The Communicator

A traffic jam in Nigeria meant an opportunity for entrepreneurship –– and inspiration for a new business

At the start of her career, Kelley Chunn, public relations professor of practice in Boston University’s School of Communication, flew overseas for a year and a half to work for the Nigerian Television Authority. There, she saw Africans selling Rice Krispies Treats and other goods to drivers stuck in a gridlock. 

She saw entrepreneurialism in action. She felt it in the air.

“Just seeing businesses and institutions that were run by Africans was a real eye opener for me,” Chunn said. “Just thinking, ‘There’s no mystery to this. This is something that you’re capable of doing.’”

In 1991, Chunn launched Kelley Chunn and Associates, a collaborative consultancy based in Boston. KCA specializes in “multicultural and cause-related public relations and marketing,” according to its website.

Although Chunn took a chance starting her business, she said it blossomed organically, and then it was enhanced by her teaching. This is her fourth semester at BU. She first taught as an associate professor at Northeastern University in the ‘90s. 

“I’m not an academic. I’m a practitioner,” she said. “So I really had no big dreams of tenure, even though I was on the tenure track.”

Chunn taught at Northeastern for five years before she decided to launch KCA. She kept winning bids such as The Tobacco Education Campaign, or what is commonly known as the anti-smoking campaign. 

People consistently called her up. They needed knowledgeable consultants to help them with multicultural projects.

“That gave me enough confidence to hang up my shingle and go out on my own,” she said.

Chunn credits MassHousing Finance Agency, a company that supports affordable homeownership and rental housing opportunities in Massachusetts, for her multicultural expertise. Here, she learned to communicate, interpret and spread information to a diverse audience. For example, many MassHousing materials translate into Spanish, Mandarin and Haitian Creole.

Although her business focuses on public relations and marketing, her career kicked off through journalism. As a broadcast journalist, her specialty was news writing and producing Public Affairs programs at ABC, NBC and CBS affiliates in Boston.

Around this time, she went overseas to work for the Nigerian Television Authority. She noted the stricter rules for freedom of expression and for covering investigative journalism. Here, she had the opportunity to train Nigerian TV broadcasters to help them improve their on-air product.

“It was really the chance of a lifetime,” Chunn said. “It was an extraordinary experience.”

After a bloodless military coup ended her team’s contract with the government, they tried starting their own production company. But there was too much turmoil in the country, she said, and she returned home.

That was when she found MassHousing and pivoted into public relations and marketing.

After working on the anti-smoking campaign, she realized the potential of cause marketing and multicultural marketing. She found her business model: collaboration. Instead of having a set staff, she builds a team based on what each project calls for.

“I’ve been able to build a collaboration of people that I know and trust and that I know will help me get the job done,” Chunn said. “And that’s really how I’ve managed to stay in business.”

Currently, Chunn’s self-proclaimed passion project is in the Roxbury Cultural District, where she is interim president. The district strives to uplift the arts, culture and community of Nubian Square and John Eliot Square.

“If there’s an inkling of a client that wants to instigate or advocate for some positive aspect of social change, I’m usually there for it,” Chunn said. “As a matter of fact, sometimes I say I’m not running a practice, I’m running a ministry. But it can be very gratifying as well.”

Chunn suggests that COM students looking to start their own business need a strategy. They need resilience, ambition, empathy, and they have to be fair and balanced in their work, she said.

She also noted the importance of both teaching and learning in the communication field.

“As a professor, even though I have a lot of experience and I have a lot to share, I think the students have really been a way for me to learn and for me to stay current and relevant,” Chunn said. “And if I forget that, there is always someone in the classroom to remind me.”