Step 1

Tunis jokes that her career path “never once had a logical progression.” After majoring in English at Williams, she taught for a year at Noble and Greenough School in Dedham, Mass., and then earned an M.A. in humanities at the University of Chicago. She returned to the Berkshires to work as an education coordinator at MASS MoCA.

In North Adams she got a taste of activism, volunteering for Massachusetts District Attorney Martha Coakley ’75, a Democrat running for the open seat left by the death of U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy. Coakley’s Republican challenger, Massachusetts State Sen. Scott Brown, won the special election in 2010. Tunis says she “got really into holding him accountable. That was the first time I saved one of my elected officials’ numbers in my phone.”