Needham resident will discuss her life and career in the information and entertainment business

Carmen Fields has been a fixture in the greater Boston journalism community for over 30 years. Her experience includes both print and broadcast journalism; journalism education and media relations in both corporate and non-profit settings. Currently, she is producer and host of the monthly public affairs program on WHDH-TV, (Boston’s channel 7) called “Higher Ground.”

Fields has also served as community relations director for National Grid, and media relations/corporate giving director for the former gas utility, KeySpan.

She recently completed work on a memoir about her Dad, the late Ernie Fields, who was a territory big band leader from the late 1920s to the mid1960s. It is scheduled for publication by the University of Oklahoma Press Spring 2023.

Keeping her union status from her days as a anchor/reporter at Boston channels 7, 4, and 2, she has parlayed that into a second career (of sorts) as a background actor in numerous television and film productions in Boston, New York and Atlanta. She is a proud member of Screen Actors Guild/American Federation of Radio and Television Artists (SAG-AFTRA) trade union.

A native of Tulsa, OK, she earned a B.A. degree in journalism from Lincoln University in Missouri and a M.S. degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University. Among many awards and citations for professional and civic service, Carmen Fields was awarded an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Salem State University in 1992.

She and husband, author Lorenz Finison, PhD, have lived in Needham since 2009. Their daughter lives and works in Los Angeles.##