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Mary Tiffany Cownie turned a knack for piecing together the details of a White House Easter egg hunt and an attraction to politics into a multifaceted public relations firm, Goldfinch Strategies.

For the next week or so, she also is working as legislative clerk for her husband, Rep. Peter Cownie, as the Iowa Legislature heads toward its planned adjournment on March 31.

Goldfinch Strategies focuses on special events planning and community, media and public relations.

Cownie, 29, is a Des Moines native who graduated from the University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications with a major in public relations and a secondary concentration on political science.

She wound up working for CNN and Gordon C. James public relations in Washington, D.C., where she helped organize the White House Easter egg roll.

That led to volunteer work with the re-election campaign of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney and, ultimately, a job in the White House Office of Scheduling and Advance, an office that provides minute-by-minute planning and coordination for presidential trips outside the Oval Office, including media logistics.

By May 2007, Cownie had returned to Iowa and was working as communications director for the Iowa Republican Party, where she put her experiences dealing with national and international news media to good use by coordinating coverage of the Iowa caucuses by 2,500 reporters.

Cownie also became steeped in community involvement when she went to work in March 2008 as a communications specialist for Prairie Meadows Racetrack and Casino. The organization, with its high-profile role in charitable giving, put her in touch with the area’s professional sports teams and community events, such as the Des Moines Arts Festival.

During the last two years, she has been involved with 15 Greater Des Moines nonprofits, including Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Iowa, the Cristo Rey Network feasibility study board, Junior Achievement of Central Iowa and Blank Park Zoo.