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quotationsopen A critical reflection
of an agency's culture and its qualifications is its people
-and we're especially proud
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Mary Beth West, APR

Principal

Mary Beth West serves as the agency’s key strategist and leads the financial and business growth of the company as well as the development of the team.

Mary Beth originally launched the company as an independent public relations consulting practice, with a prior 10-year career that included executive posts in the banking industry and mid-management posts in the corporate and agency sectors.

Ultimately growing and managing a client portfolio with annual billings at nearly three times the national industry average for solo public relations consultancies in the U.S., Mary Beth quickly grew the company to now include a staff managing a diverse client base in multiple industries.

Mary Beth’s career has included a range of management positions, including vice president of regional marketing for Union Planters Bank of East Tennessee and Southeastern Kentucky, assistant vice president of marketing for BankFirst in Knoxville, and director of community relations for Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America.

She has served in national leadership roles throughout the past decade with the largest public relations professional organization in the world, the 32,000-member, New York-based Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), for which she led the organization’s National Advocacy Advisory Board from 2007-08 in close collaboration with PRSA’s Board of Ethics and Professional Standards. She has also served twice on PRSA’s national board.

Mary Beth’s award-winning work has included creation and implementation of national media relations campaigns, employee communications programs and crisis preparedness systems. Accredited in Public Relations (APR) by the PRSA Universal Accreditation Board, Mary Beth holds a bachelor’s degree in communications / public relations from the University of Tennessee, where she was honored as the Sammie Lynn Puett Public Relations Student of the Year in 1994, received the UT Chancellor’s Citation for campus leadership and service and earned numerous scholarships.

Mary Beth lives in Maryville with her husband, Charles, president of West Chevrolet, a fourth-generation, family-owned franchise dealership. They have three daughters.