2024 PRSA Chair Joseph Abreu Accused Treasurer of “Blatant Disrespect”

More indicting insights are in hand from legally obtained University of Florida e-mails sent to / from past PRSA chair and PRSA cartel ringleader, Mickey Nall (now since no longer employed with the University’s PR faculty, following this records request, but still collecting PRSA awards-trafficking trophies that UF leverages to promote its PR academic program, nonetheless).

On September 9, 2024 — about two years ago — infighting among Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) executive committee members ran amok, all while then-PRSA Chair Joseph Abreu was busy inflicting upon PRSA’s diminishing membership yet another six-figure deficit year.

After then-PRSA National Treasurer Jessica Graham sent an urgent e-mail on “Budget / Dues discussion” to Exec Comm members and then-CFO Philip Bonaventura (oddly leaving CEO Linda Thomas Brooks off the email thread), Chair Abreu scoffed at Graham in a written side-remark that he sent / forwarded to his unelected Brain Trust — Mickey Nall (who wasn’t even on the PRSA Board in any capacity) and Heide Harrell:

“I’m so frustrated with her. The blatant disrespect.”

Abreu’s forwarding Treasurer Graham’s private e-mail to a non-Board member (Mickey Nall) breached ethics and PRSA Board policy for “confidentiality.”

After all, I wouldn’t even have this e-mail, if Joseph Abreu hadn’t broken PRSA rules and sent it on to someone outside of PRSA leadership — and with a publicly discoverable taxpayer-funded e-mail server (Mickey Nall, then employed at UF… a public university that’s obligated to cough up records, on request).

Official PRSA National Policy requires its Board members — most of all its National Chair, for crying out loud — to honor a “confidentiality” code…

…Not that the likes of Joseph Abreu has ever thought any rules apply to him:

Not only did Joseph Abreu break PRSA National Board policy by forwarding a detailed e-mail thread sent by Treasurer Jessica Graham about PRSA’s precarious financial situation to a non-Board member (Nall), but Abreu also violated the letter and spirit of his own PRSA job description, which REQUIRED that he “work cooperatively” and “in a collaborative work style” with his fellow volunteers and staff.

Sending snarky, snide complaints in an unauthorized “forward” of a private email about PRSA’s Treasurer?… An obvious policy violation.

Aside from Abreu’s policy violations (which, frankly, should have seen him kicked off the PRSA Board and expelled from leadership… if not membership), let’s consider his message and his accusation against Treasurer Graham.

“Blatant disrespect”???

All Treasurer Graham was proposing was a meeting, to “share revenue ideas that have been vetted, expense cuts that have been made, and considerations we need to keep in mind as we budget for next year.”

Treasurer Graham’s financial concerns were beyond merited.

While PRSA had experienced an uptick in 2022 under Felicia Blow’s chairmanship, all other prior years had been abject-disaster for PRSA, financially. And what we know of 2025 doesn’t appear to be better, even though PRSA still hasn’t properly disclosed its audited numbers for Ray Day’s 2025 chairmanship year yet, and it’s closing in on November 2026.

Given PRSA’s long-term financial failures (which we’ve since learned in 2026 have delivered PRSA into insolvency-risk territory), this innocuous proposal simply to meet by Treasurer Graham would have seemed sound, at least to any reasonable person.

Trouble is, we aren’t talking about “reasonable” PR so-called “leaders” here.

We’re dealing instead with a boatload of financial buffoons and power-hungry charlatans, to be candid.

For her part, Heide Harrell — who then was running for PRSA National Chair-Elect — knew that Treasurer Graham was planning to challenge her for the PRSA National Board chairmanship the following month by running from the floor of the PRSA Assembly:

As such, Heide Harrell egged Joseph Abreu on, in her own e-mail retort, caterwauling as follows:

“This is all part of her ‘platform.’ She’s the one leading the discussions on financials. She’s the one who wants to make change happen. She’s being completely disrespectful of you as Chair. Ray (Day) needs to step up and say something!!!”

More e-mails are in hand from the Mickey Nall / UF data tranche, that shed light on how the PRSA “sausage was made” even earlier in 2023 to get Heide Harrell herself retained on the PRSA Board for 2024 and beyond, despite her obvious issues.

The problem I have with Harrell (and Abreu, for that matter) is indeed personal (they both have behaved in toxic, abusive, unethical — even illegal — ways against me, and I have the receipts to prove it)… but it’s also professional.

In 2021, for example, when Harrell sat for this public-facing PRSSA student webinar / video as a PRSA National Board member seated the prior year (see clips below), her remarks laid bare her financial incompetence, in which she seemed to take pride.

Back in 2021 (a year in which I was unethically attacked by an Abreu / Harrell aligned cartel faction in PRSA inclusive of Mickey Nall and others), I already knew that PRSA had lost money well into the six-figures in 2019, pre-pandemic.

Harrell’s own revelations of her lack of quantitative ability made clear that PRSA’s road ahead with her in any leadership position did not bode well for PRSA’s members, financially. And indeed, it has not:

What’s truly rich in the Mickey Nall / UF E-mail tranche is documentation of who directly supported Heide Harrell as a Board candidate in prior years — even in spite of her well-known financial-acumen weaknesses — and who opted not to support her.

Clearly, UF “Gator” Joseph Abreu was squarely in the Heide Harrell “BFF” camp, as was Mickey Nall himself, as well as Harrell’s fellow Brain Trust buddies, such as Jane Dvorak (Colorado) and self-admitted corporate trademark-violator, Gary McCormick (Tennessee).

These 2023 e-mails in the public-domain UF e-mail tranche show Heide Harrell’s and others’ maneuverings:

Some other PRSA Past Chairs did not support Harrell.

For example, 2020 Chair Garland Stansell — who holds the dubious distinction of having lost more than $1.4 million in member dollars during his year as chair — literally gave Heide Harrell a “You know I love you more than my luggage…<but no, I’m not writing you an endorsement letter>” reply.

Ouch!

It’s one thing to be rejected by someone with a track record of ethical and good service. It’s far worse to be rejected for support by someone even more inept than the requestor.

Mickey Nall began making suggestions for Heide Harrell to approach other PRSA past leaders whom he thought she could try to wrangle into endorsing her, including Mickey Nall’s fellow University of Florida cartel operative, Del Galloway, among others:

But even Del Galloway was a no-go for the Heide camp…

… even after Mickey Nall laid it on thick with his version of a Southern charm offensive, with a Gator-Mafia cartel twist. Emphasis on “offensive“:

From what I gather, Heide Harrell didn’t make the cut in 2023 for the 2024 PRSA Board, much less an officer position:

So once January 1, 2024, rolled around, that year’s Chair, Joseph Abreu, took it upon himself to appoint his unelected BFF Heide Harrell as “Senior Counsel” to the Board, irrespective of others’ obvious and valid concerns about her.

Consequently, in 2024, Heide Harrell was back, from a posture of being technically on the Board, too, to run for PRSA Chair (as mentioned above).

This time, PRSA Repeat-Offender Jane Dvorak provided spin advice to Harrell, to help whitewash the state of PRSA under Harrell’s and Abreu’s catastrophic long-term involvement on the National Board, which Dvorak thought was just dandy… “belly laugh” and all:

I later heard through the grapevine that the 2024 PRSA National Assembly was nothing short of a zoo, in the Ugly PR Trade Cartel Politics category.

In fact, things got so ugly with Mickey Nall’s camp, that a formal grievance was registered post-Assembly, not only against Mickey Nall but also against Chair Joseph Abreu and potentially even Past Chair Felicia Blow, as I understand it.

The Mickey Nall UF E-mail tranche revealed back-and-forth exchanges that sounded absolutely hideous, as to dirty politics, back-stabbing, and lack of ethics:

Apparently, however, to get himself off the hook from being held accountable, all Joseph Abreu had to do to deflect “complaints” against himself and his buddies was to tell his underling who reported to him — then-CEO Linda Thomas Brooks, who I believe was, by then, hanging on to her job by a thread — that he “reject(ed) any of the alleged complaints“…

And Voilà!… just like *THAT* — POOF!… “Complaint”: GONE.

There is so much more to this corruption story (in PRSA, there always is!).

But this specific saga of 2023-24 PRSA leadership and the veiled, mafia-like tactics of throwing people with valid financial concerns in PRSA under the bus so that the most incompetent + corrupt can rise to the top, says everything about the current state of the U.S. PR trade association.

Well… almost everything:

Mary Beth West, APR, FPRCA, has been a whistleblower of PRSA misconduct and illegal activity, for many years.