DEI Muddies PRSA’s Tainted Waters to Zero-Tran$parency
Former PRSA National Board member Rick Callender's legal troubles tell the tale of DEI leveraged for all the wrong reasons.
There may be no greater indictment of how Diversity / Equity / Inclusion (DEI) partisan-activist rhetoric has been leveraged for cover-ups and ill-gotten gain in the PR industry (power, position, puff-piece publicity, etc.) than dual crises now unfolding, between PRSA and Valley Water.
Past Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) National Board “Senior Counsel” and current PRSA Public Affairs & Government Section Executive Committee member Rick Callender, whose day job for decades has been with Santa Clara Valley Water District, a.k.a. “Valley Water” in San Jose, California (San Francisco Bay Area), is casting a new spotlight on DEI’s intersectionality with financial losses and documented misconduct.
https://www.prsa.org/person/callendar-rick
Mr. Callender is now the former CEO of Valley Water public utility in California, following many months of controversy and investigation into alleged misconduct. (Mr. Callender denies the allegations.)
In a separate role five years ago, Mr. Callender was appointed by 2021 PRSA Chair Michelle Olson as a “senior counsel” to PRSA’s National Board in 2021.
Today, Mr. Callender remains on the executive committee of PRSA’s Public Affairs & Government (PAG) Section, which includes some 1,000 federal, military and other government-employed communicators.
For years, particularly during the Biden Administration, PRSA has pushed DEI ideology to PAG members and the global PR industry, in lock-step with Biden-era Executive Order mandates that required massive devotion of taxpayer-compensated workforce time and resources to DEI dogma.
Five years later, Mr. Callender’s long-simmering legal troubles with his employer at Valley Water now beg the question:
How did Mr. Callender’s brand of “management” help lead PRSA to where the PR trade association finds itself today?
Even pre-dating 2021, PRSA was having major financial problems:
In addition to the PRSA Board’s unwillingness to right-size PRSA’s post-pandemic operations to a responsible budget and spending caps, PRSA was engaged in massive cover-ups and retaliation against members who dared ask questions not to the PRSA Board’s liking.
For example, as a member and past PRSA National Board member myself in 2020, when I asked pointed financial questions on the MyPRSA online discussion board, PRSA’s National leadership expelled me off the platform, on false and ginned-up accusations of rules violations, intent on silencing and frightening me.
Meanwhile, plenty of other PRSA members in 2020 were advocating for me on the discussion board, saying quite clearly that my questions and concerns to PRSA National were justified:
Yet these diverse voices speaking out in my favor for PRSA financial transparency were ignored by PRSA’s 2020 Board and certainly later by PRSA’s 2021 leadership, including Chair Michelle Olson and her “senior counsel” appointee to PRSA’s Board, Mr. Callender.
In fact, the PRSA Board held in late July 2020 a secretive meeting (immediately after the above MyPRSA posts in solidarity with me were registered), fully in “Executive Session.”
This format meant that any PRSA Board discussions and determinations did not have to be captured in the Board minutes… thus protecting PRSA Board members like Michelle Olson and Garland Stansell and Heide Harrell and Angela Walters Eveillard and Samantha Villegas from accountability, as to potentially unlawful PRSA retaliation against me that soon followed, after this meeting.
Fast-forward to 2026:
In recent weeks, PRSA’s Mr. Callender received a “golden-parachute” exit-deal from his regular employment last month at Valley Water, amid many prior months of publicity about misconduct allegations, according to multiple news outlets extending from California to New York.
Valley Water Board member Rebecca Eisenberg has not minced words, as to her dissatisfaction with Mr. Callender’s alleged egregious behaviors at the public utility.
She states that PRSA’s Mr. Callender “stands to walk away with $20 million in pension and severance…”
If you take time to peruse the Valley Water investigation documents – which are posted in the public domain – they appear to tell a story of power abuses and unprofessionalism by PRSA’s Mr. Callender.
Some key excerpts from these official investigation documents include:
And now, PRSA itself is under water, too.
2026 PRSA National Chair Heide Harrell sent out a secret memo last week to a cherrypicked recipient list, spelling out PRSA’s dire insolvency issues.
She claimed the issues have resulted from “more than six consecutive years of membership decline and related revenue shortfalls,” during which time both Ms. Harrell and Mr. Callender were seated on PRSA’s Board in various years (Mr. Callender as a “senior counsel” in 2021; Ms. Harrell in various board roles over the entire six-year timeframe… including in 2020, when my dire financial concerns on the MyPRSA discussion board were being punished and censored).
In 2019, yet another water industry PR person from PRSA’s National Board, Samantha Villegas, seconded a motion that passed during a board meeting, for PRSA to begin concealing members of PRSA’s Audit Committee and its Grievance Committee.
Concealing committee members’ identities means that rife conflicts of interest can occur with zero transparency or accountability.
Later, in 2025, Ms. Villegas was pushed forward by PRSA National as a PR ethics expert on a nationally promoted webinar:
I later learned in a FOIA request that Ms. Villegas worked as Chief Communications Officer for the Office of Water at the federal government’s Environmental Protection Agency, and was in touch periodically with Ms. Harrell’s soon-to-be employer:
Like Mr. Callender and Ms. Villegas, PRSA Chair Harrell is now a PRSA water-industry PR person, too. (Coincidence?)
Since receiving her job offer in December 2023, Heide Harrell has been employed as comms director for the Central Arkansas Water public utility, where not only her salary and benefits but also her PRSA Board expenses are being footed by hard-working, rural Arkansas ratepayers, according to records obtained through a FOIA request.
Ms. Harrell’s CEO at Central Arkansas Water, Tad Bohannon, was well-aware of Ms. Harrell’s significant PRSA involvement, when he hired her at the aspiring “trusted utility”:
Other Central Arkansas Water FOIA requests that I executed revealed that Ms. Harrell partnered in 2023 with 2017 PRSA National Chair Jane Dvorak on a “Fill the Funnel” webinar for PRSA chapters on how to reach / recruit students.
Ms. Harrell’s and Ms. Dvorak’s talking points that they embedded in their own PowerPoint stated:
“…we tossed members to the wayside and became a force to reckon with — and here we are!“
and
“We’re the dream team and too cute to be in prison!”
Ms. Harrell has made no secret of her career tactic of seemingly strongarming her own employers to cover her personal PRSA dues.
She even stated as much on a public-facing webinar for PRSSA students in March 2021 (the same month her PRSA board ejected me permanently from membership on false and dishonest grounds, in a PRSA kangaroo court of self-interested culprits, like Ms. Dvorak):
While Ms. Harrell draws her $159,091 compensation “package” at Arkansas utility ratepayer expense, one of Ms. Harrell’s PRSA National Chair predecessors, Anthony D’Angelo of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School, commiserated with Ms. Harrell only in recent weeks, in a heavily — almost comically — over-scripted podcast interview.
Mr. D’Angelo kicked off his remarks, that the PRSA National Chairmanship is “a full-time job” and “a major commitment… a really demanding one.”
Such remarks — to which Ms. Harrell agreed with an affirmative head-nod — clearly indicate that Ms. Harrell is devoting herself to PRSA’s money-losing business “full time” while enjoying her full Arkansas water utility salary and benefits, covered without expense to PRSA, thanks to unsuspecting Arkansas citizen ratepayers.
Those utility ratepayers enjoy no benefit whatsoever from PRSA’s hijinks, which appear only to benefit Ms. Harrell’s high profile and position of power in the insular and financially crumbling PRSA cesspool.
And make no mistake: Chair Harrell is a big Rick Callender fan.
Mr. Harrell lauded Mr. Callender years ago for his role (with her) on the PRSA Nominating Committee, which seated national PRSA directors in the trade association who then later, in turn, supported both Ms. Harrell’s and Mr. Callender’s own political ambitions in the legally noncompliant and financially compromised PRSA.
PRSA announced in February 2025 that it was “doubling down on DEI,” as an obvious partisan political rebuke to President Trump.
For his part, Mr. Callender stands among the throngs of PRSA’s DEI zealots, who have leveraged and weaponized DEI rhetoric and dogma, as a personal iron dome of “Don’t tread on me!” anti-accountability.
By striking fear in stakeholders, that they might be labelled a “racist” or be subjected to other reputationally destructive name-calling, DEI is too often weaponized by organizations like PRSA to deflect serious questions about documented financial problems and various forms of reported misconduct or even potential fraud, occurring on leadership’s direct watch:
This situation is also precisely what has occurred at Mr. Callender’s Valley Water, it seems — with Valley Water board director Ms. Eisenberg being the sole voice of accountability and fiduciary sanity.
The louder-and-prouder that PRSA members (and Valley Water’s own DEI sycophants) proclaim their DEI allegiances, the quicker they get fast-tracked into leadership positions, regardless of whether or not they understand how a balance sheet works or how to manage a P&L.
For example, “too cute to be in prison” PRSA Chair Harrell shot to the top of PRSA’s National Board, as soon as she announced to the world in March 2021 (while she was employed at Hillary Clinton’s former Rose Law Firm of Little Rock, Arkansas) that on “IRS tax issues” or similar financial matters, she had “not a clue.”
In PRSA’s DEI Water World, the more “clueless” you are on finances, the easier for others — like shadow boards — to take advantage of that fact. Bad-actor DEI proponents too often can be seen in plain sight, working in bad faith as DEI “trainers” and “thought leaders.”
For his part, Mr. Callender has lectured to PRSA members on more than one occasion, from atop PRSA’s DEI throne of lies:
source: https://x.com/prsa_pag/status/1536848681869139968?s=20
Anyone who dares question PRSA’s DEI Elite in leadership can expect harsh retaliation.
For example, 2021 PRSA Chair Michelle Olson proudly announced during one PRSA DEI webinar several years ago that she scolded her own client (a Black male officer-level executive, mind you), when he apparently failed to click his heels and kowtow to the DEI rhetoric Ms. Olson sought to impose upon his company’s (her client’s) “values statement” as an uber-woke white lady of PRSA renown.
Take a listen:
In 2023, PRSA National broadcast on its “doubling down on DEI” section of the PRSA website a celebration of PRSA chapters who won PRSA’s DEI award.
Ironically (given later events of January 2026), it was PRSA’s Minnesota Chapter that won 1st Place as PRSA’s top DEI performer.
On the webinar, the PRSA Minnesota Chapter’s DEI Officer, Leah Kondes, flat-out advocated that anyone who rejects the holy canons of mandatory DEI “training” (which many people rightly view as forced indoctrination of divisive, toxic, and politically partisan dogma when it is presented as such) should be kicked out of their employment / shown the door. (So much for “equity” and “diversity of thought”!)
Ms. Kondes characterized a management team inflicting such overt retaliation as having “backbone.”
I call it “bullying.”
The U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division calls it “illegal.”
Notably, recent IRS tax filings by the PRSA Minnesota Chapter reveal year-over-year net losses, upwards of -$15,000 in chapter losses for 2023 and 2024 combined. So, the oft-stated mythology that DEI is “good for business” is pure bunk.
I’m also living proof — a survivor, even — of PRSA’s DEI arrogance + retaliation.
As noted, in 2021, Mr. Callender, Ms. Harrell and Ms. Olson all served on the PRSA Board that ejected me from membership, after I had expressed my more conservative viewpoints, and after I had been reporting for more than a year by that time, massive, seven-figure financial discrepancies involving both PRSA and PRSA’s DEI “charity,” the PRSA Foundation.
Note: The PRSA Foundation heavily promotes and awards both scholarships and internships using BIPOC racial “identity” as a “must” and a required “Qualification,” in gross violation of U.S. federal law and EEOC regulations that bar racial “qualifiers” for employment. Example:
As verified through a FOIA request e-mail, Ms. Olson was found in 2021 to have personally recruited then-PRSA National Secretary Joseph Abreu to execute PRSA’s unlawful retaliation against me, to which Mr. Abreu responded in an e-mail that he was therefore PRSA’s “Sacrificial Lamb.”
After he chaired PRSA’s “Grievance Panel” to oversee this unlawful retaliation, Mr. Abreu was then fast-tracked to the PRSA 2024 National Chairmanship as a DEI poster child himself, despite being woefully underqualified.
To prove the point, during Mr. Abreu’s chairmanship, PRSA lost a net $156,701 in member dollars, compounding PRSA’s millions in losses over prior years.
SIDEBAR: In the months after Mr. Abreu saw to my elimination from PRSA, Mr. Abreu’s co-Board member, Mr. Callender, managed to “win” a vaunted PRSA Silver Anvil. He was congratulated by another PRSA board member, who now is also a National Chair-Elect for PRSA while also working for a taxpayer-funded government employer (e-mail obtained via FOIA).
The PRSA Silver Anvil Award snagged by Mr. Callender while serving on PRSA’s National Board begs the question of how PRSA National Board members might leverage their political influence to “win” national PRSA awards, in potential / perceived conflict of interest or perceived quid pro quo (a PRSA Ethics Code violation).
Back when I was on PRSA’s National Board (2002), we had a rule that Board members did not even submit entries into Silver Anvils, because of appearances of potential conflict of interest. Funny how that rule was later reversed, unannounced.
After their dirty deed was done in March 2021 of sending PRSA’s expulsion letter to me to harm my own career and industry standing, Mr. Callender piped up in a full-board e-mail correspondence (obtained later through FOIA).
Mr. Callender let it slip, that although the expulsion of me came from PRSA’s Board, Mr. Callender wasn’t even in receipt yet of PRSA’s “grievance process.”
Mr. Callender derided me nonetheless in his e-mail to the full PRSA board – without evidence – that I was “extremely litigious” (in point of fact, I had never filed a lawsuit against anyone in my life, including PRSA).
He went on to imply that PRSA’s retaliatory expulsion methodology needed to be tightened up against any future members who might have grounds to “sue” PRSA. Mr. Callender stated that he wanted his remarks on this matter to fall under PRSA’s “attorney client privilege” so that they wouldn’t be discoverable later.
Mr. Callender’s message seemed clear, at least to me:
“If any member even thinks about suing PRSA, we publicly expel them and ruin their professional reputations preemptively, as long as no one can later pin it on the PRSA Board.”
In addition, Mr. Callender essentially implied, among other things, that he wanted PRSA to emulate the NAACP’s expulsion procedures.
Interestingly, Mr. Callender would later face accusations back in California that he was attempting to use public water utility ratepayer dollars to the NAACP’s own benefit:
Mr. Callender’s earlier PRSA power machinations now seem indicative of what was yet to come at Valley Water.
Mr. Callender has been reported in well-documented and substantiated complaints / allegations back at Valley Water to have allegedly engaged in any range of potentially abusive, harassing / hostile, retaliatory, and / or inappropriate conduct against specified subordinates, who themselves had little to no power in the workplace…
Yet all the while, Mr. Callender was showboating on social media as a self-proclaimed women’s rights champion:
This is the very kind of gaslighting that is typical of DEI rhetoric-gone-wrong.
At the same time, PRSA National and many of its chapters were racking up year-after-year-after-year-after-year-after-year (and so on) financial and membership losses, alongside legally noncompliant financial reporting failures at PRSA’s annual meeting.
In PRSA, this DEI window-dressing and finger-pointing of “white supremacy” masks corruption that runs deep:
PRSA leadership’s toxic “white privilege” DEI messaging has been parroted ad nauseam on PRSA platforms, such as this clip from a PRSA webinar, “From Statements to Action to Anti-Racism: The Communicator’s Role“:
In one of numerous speaking engagements that PRSA recruited Mr. Callender to participate in throughout recent years, Mr. Callender noted Valley Water’s “one water” program and scope of responsibilities. A direct quote:
“The only thing we don’t do is the sewer.”
source: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/17cJmB9Hfr/
Considering his now-former role at Valley Water and his legacy left behind in PRSA as well, Mr. Callender may wish to rethink the accuracy of that claim.
Mary Beth West is a past National Board member of PRSA (2002-03; 2008) and was a national award-winning member of PRSA’s College of Fellows, prior to PRSA’s illegal retaliation to eliminate her from membership, after she reported millions in financial discrepancies, amid other ethics misconduct in PRSA involving numerous past PRSA National Board chairs. Her blog chronicles many of her PRSA experiences, with copious documentation.
