10-Year Drain: PRSA PR Trade Cartel’s Venable LLP / Legal Expenses

Sometimes, to see the full forest for the trees, you have to throw it in reverse:

Back away, and truly examine an organization’s financial expense trends over time, to understand what’s REALLY going on in the heavily veiled background.

Perhaps no better example in the U.S. PR industry exists, than the long-embattled Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) trade association, which I now refer to as a trade cartel — and for good reason.

PRSA’s well-documented antitrust violations aside, it doesn’t require an advanced finance degree to see this graph of PRSA’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Form 990 filings to the U.S. federal government over the past 10 years to see that PRSA’s legal + ethics woes are nothing new.

(NOTE: PRSA still hasn’t filed its 2025 990 to the IRS, even though it’s now OCTOBER.)

The fact that in more recent years (2020 forward) PRSA’s expenditures with Venable LLP law firm specifically do not match its claims of universal “legal” expenses, is all the more reason that PRSA is way-overdue for a government-led forensic accounting audit of PRSA’s corruption.

For example, in 2024, how did trainwreck-Chair Joseph Abreu spend $190,549 with PRSA’s Venable LLP legal counsel, but only claim universal legal expenses to the IRS of $135,687?

That’s a $54,862 discrepancy.

And WOW… What the HECK was with 2019?

$242,991 in “legal” expenses? That’s the equivalent of about 883 PRSA members’ full-year dues!

But don’t blame it all on 2019 PRSA Chair Deb Peterson.

Yes, her year as PRSA National Chair clearly recorded a meteoric rise in PRSA legal expense, to nearly a quarter-MILLION DOLLARS, in a year that also registered an ugly, pre-pandemic deficit:

But consider the clown car of PRSA Chair predecessors that poor Deb had to clean up after, from 2016-18:

1. Mark McClennan (2016)…

…who helped ramrod PRSA Bylaw changes during his chairmanship year that began allowing the PRSA National Board to begin selecting their own officer slate.

This contrived maneuver hyper-politicized the PRSA Board, making already-bad problems in PRSA’s toxic national culture only worse.

Years later, THIS circular firing squad (video clip below) of PRSA Chairs past-and-present (Nall, Blow, D’Angelo, Abreu, and others) illustrated the point.

Embarrassingly at each other’s throats during a PRSA Assembly Delegate webinar in 2024, they postured, finger-pointed, and opined how on earth to reverse what Mark McClennan and 2014 Chair Joseph Cohen put in place in 2016:

2. Jane Dvorak (2017) …

…now forever self-branded as the “The Jello Fellow” (of PRSA’s College of Fellows… or, as some say, the College of Yellows, for their inability to stand up against obvious PRSA National Board tomfoolery).

At times — and in my own opinion but based on copious evidence of her own making — Jane Dvorak appears to have never contemplated an upcoming PRSA National event without first asking where the nearest bar is… thus fueling a troubling alcohol-laden culture within some segments of PRSA leadership.

Jane Dvorak incurred / inflicted so many ethics violations during her year as PRSA National Chair, that PRSA’s Board of Ethics & Professional Standards (BEPS) had to issue its version of a censure-memo to Dvorak and her “PRSA Executive Committee.”

The memo provided “Recommendations” on specific areas of PRSA operations that clearly had been derailed throughout 2017 under The Jello Fellow’s catastrophic year as Chair… all of which posed existential threats to PRSA that continue playing themselves out, to this day:

3. Tony D’Angelo (2018) …

…the Syracuse University / Newhouse School cartel member and awards-trafficking beneficiary, who was placed in PRSA leadership under the corrupt “we mark our own homework by appointing our own officer slate” Mark McClennan bylaw change.

Tony D’Angelo LITERALLY was assigned custodial duty on Jane Dvorak, while Tony served as PRSA Chair-Elect in 2017, to clean up after “The Jello Fellow” that year.

This rather ugly and unseemly “fixer” role may explain why everyone took pity on Tony and nominated him for the PRSA Gold Anvil (in an effort spearheaded last year by “Gator Mafia” PRSA awards trafficker Del Galloway):

At least that was the situation, as per the written admission of Past PRSA National President Kathleen Larey Lewton, APR, Fellow PRSA, who made no secret to me of her own animus against 2017 PRSA National Chair Jane Dvorak:

I’ll never forget the time Tony fell all over himself, apologizing in an e-mail for Jane Dvorak’s hideous and unethical behavior toward me.

Less than one year later, he would join forces with Jane Dvorak, to begin attacking me, in league with her himself, because Tony decided it was the easy thing for Tony to do, instead of standing up against obvious PRSA corruption.

So… YEAH <cringe…>.

Let’s cut Deb Peterson some slack on her sky-high PRSA legal expenses in 2019, at least somewhat, given prior compliance violations dumped in her lap.

While I’m sure unavoidable, due to PRSA’s 2017 and 2018 self-inflicted governance and ethics debacles, those big fat retainer checks PRSA paid in long-suffering members’ dollars to Venable LLP (former “lobbyist” law firm to Omnicom / Ketchum commercial interests owned by Russia’s Vladimir Putin) arguably helped trigger the years-long, catastrophic financial decline of PRSA.

Consequently, PRSA is now — in 2026, as chaired by Dvorak protégé Heide Harrell — teetering on the edge of insolvency.

But don’t take my word for it.

Check out PRSA’s annual financial disclosures on the Pro Publica website for yourself, or, just take a gander at 2026 PRSA National Chair Heide Harrell’s own secretive, desperate e-mail sent in February (2026) to Jane Dvorak and other Past Chairs:

As PRSA members — or what’s left of them — soon convene in Orlando for #PRSAICON and their governance Assembly (which, in past years, has devolved into an appalling bully-fest), there should be some sober reflection and assessment of how (and why) PRSA arrived at its dire state of current affairs.

Not-So-Happy-Thumbs…

Charming as ever, Jane!…

Mary Beth West, APR, FPRCA, has worked to drive positive, systemic change in PR industry trade associations, for the past 10 years. Instead of cooperating and demonstrating professional / ethical behavior, PRSA has doubled down with increasingly unethical practices. West can be followed on LinkedIn and X.