University media relations offices face a structural problem: they represent hundreds of faculty experts across dozens of disciplines, but their outreach to journalists is interruption-based. Press releases go unread. Pitches to journalists compete with hundreds of other pitches. The faculty with the most important research to share are often the least accessible to reporters working on deadline because they're not in the reporters' existing networks.
The university's specific challenge was maximizing the visibility of faculty research in national and international media at a time when the editorial team had cut back on unsolicited faculty pitches. They needed a system where journalists could find their experts rather than one where the media office had to interrupt journalists to offer them.
Rolli's expert platform was deployed for 47 faculty members across the university's priority research areas: public health, economics, national security, environmental science, and technology policy. Faculty profiles were built with credential verification, research specialization tags, recent publications, and availability for media contact.
The platform placed faculty profiles within Rolli's journalist-facing expert network — making them searchable and directly contactable by the 27+ newsroom partners with journalist access. Profiles were configured with the faculty's communication preferences: availability windows, preferred contact method, and topic areas they were prepared to comment on immediately.
The media relations office monitored inbound request volume through the platform's dashboard, using engagement data to identify which research areas were generating the most journalist interest and to prioritize which additional faculty members to onboard in subsequent quarters.
“We flipped the model. Instead of us pitching journalists, journalists found our faculty. The inbound volume in the first 90 days exceeded what we'd generated in the previous year of outbound pitching.”
