Thirty Ink Media is helping Purchase College leverage the unpublicized Feb. 7 visit by members of the Russian dissident band Pussy Riot.

Pussy Riot
Alyokhina, left, and Tolokonnikova at Purchase College-SUNY. Photo: Kristi McKee

Two members of the group arrested and imprisoned in Russia for nearly two years before being released in December, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, are on a campaign for prisoners' rights and appeared at an Amnesty International concert at Brooklyn's Barclays Center on Feb. 5 and met with several media outlets.

The duo sat down with Purchase College's liberal arts and sciences school dean Suzanne Kessler Feb. 7 in an closed meeting organized by Russian political activists.

New York-based Thirty Ink Media, led by Hill+Knowlton Strategies and Gibbs & Soell alum Jon Lieb, represents academic institutions and professional services firms and has worked with Purchase in the past.

Lieb told O'Dwyer's his firm is currently providing contracted PR consultation, support, and service to SUNY Purchase on a variety of stories, projects, and event promotions.

A journalism student at the State University of New York school covered the Pussy Riot meeting and published reports in the college's arts magazine and digital news site.

The Russian government's release of Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina was among others under an amnesty program widely seen as a PR gesture ahead of the Winter Olympics currently underway in Sochi, Russia.