Explosive PRSA Email Tranches Reveal Ethics Violations & Gutter-Talk
New, legally obtained government records have turned up thousands of pages of incriminating PRSA e-mails, proving ethics violations and more.
In recent weeks of the PR industry’s September “Ethics Month,” new government open records requests have uncovered a some 3,000-page tranche of e-mails sent to and from a wide range of Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) leaders, including PRSA’s current National Chair, Heide Harrell, with many e-mails steeped in conspiratorial threats and shocking allegations against people ranging from PRSA Assembly voting delegates, to recent-past PRSA Governance Chair officials, to PRSA College of Fellows leadership, to yours truly (Mary Beth West), by name.
At this writing, for weeks now, I have pursued feedback and explanations directly from PRSA Board and executive-staff officials — including PRSA Chair Heide Harrell and CEO Matt Marcial… as well as the originator of the e-mail data tranche, Mickey Nall of the University of Florida (or at least now-former faculty member at UF).
All inquiries have been stonewalled and ignored, in violation of PRSA’s Code of Ethics’ “honesty” as well as “free flow of information” provisions.
One key insight from the e-mail trache is that PRSA’s recent-past CFO Philip Bonaventura and CEO Linda Thomas Brooks were “fired” from PRSA, allegedly, as per this explosive e-mail from Heide Harrell to various PRSA leadership cartel members, amid other insights of PRSA’s financial “emergency”:
A smattering of other explosive e-mails include these alarming “shank her ass” and “cut a bitch” threats, made by Chair Heide Harrell and Past Chair Mickey Nall:
These e-mails are particularly shocking, as juxtaposed with PRSA’s so-called “Ethics Month” posturing on social media, which has been in full-force across all weeks of recently stonewalled requests for comment about the e-mail tranche:
Chair Heide Harrell also can be seen in another exchange, below, in a shared rant with her mentor, 2017 PRSA National Chair Jane Dvorak, over an earlier government records tranche I had uncovered in 2024, which showed how rural Arkansas ratepayers at Central Arkansas Water (Ms. Harrell’s employer at her day job) were going to get stuck paying Ms. Harrell’s PRSA travel bills if PRSA did not pay them, among other revelations:
Instead of answering for their obvious misconduct and embarrassing behaviors, PRSA’s response to my questions and e-mail evidence is to “BLOCK” me, even though doing so violates PRSA’s Ethics Code “Free Flow of Information” tenet:
The legally obtained e-mail below from 2024 appears to indicate that a third-party complaint was registered against Mickey Nall, 2024 PRSA National Chair Joseph Abreu, and Dr. Felicia Blow, tied to PRSA Assembly activities and alleged unethical behaviors.
Nothing about the complaint was ever disclosed to PRSA members.
In one e-mail, past National Chair Dr. Felicia Blow — only the third Black national board chair ever to lead the Society (2022) — complained of being rejected in 2025 from admission to the PRSA College of Fellows.
Dr. Blow references “very, very serious (near litigable) actions that occurred during (her) term” and behaviors in PRSA that “showed perceived discrimination…“:
Now-former University of Florida employee and 2026 PRSA Foundation Paladin Award-winner Mickey Nall — who, as per one of the e-mails referenced above, threatened to “cut a bitch” if a specific PRSA Assembly voting delegate were to mention ethics concerns during Assembly debate involving then-candidate Heide Harrell — wrote to PRSA College of Fellows leadership last year, claiming that the CoF “is just a ‘mean girls’ group now“:
Among many violations of ethics and antitrust law evident in the emails are the countless incidents of PRSA awards-trafficking among specific PRSA Past President’s Council cartel members, particularly with allegiances to University of Florida and Syracuse University.
(Note: not all PRSA Past National Presidents / Chairs are cartel members. Many Past Chairs of PRSA are very nice and upstanding people. However, a large range of individuals are active in this group, who are most responsible for the vast majority of unethical and illegal conduct in PRSA over the past two decades.)
Several months ago, I published a blog post documenting the PRSA “Gator Mafia” cartel at the University of Florida, as a frequent awards-trader with Syracuse University PR faculty officials.
Like clockwork, PRSA then picked up University of Florida alumnus Del Galloway’s nomination last year of Syracuse University’s Tony D’Angelo for PRSA’s Gold Anvil and announced just this week that D’Angelo is the 2026 Gold Anvil honoree, despite both Galloway’s and D’Angelo’s excessive ethics violations and D’Angelo’s six-figure financial discrepancies incurred during his own PRSA National Board service between 2018 and 2019:
For years, PRSA’s ethics have only gone from bad to worse, leading the association to near-insolvency.
It will be interesting to learn how 2026 PRSA Assembly Delegates respond to all the back-room dealings and ugliness, that now are laid bare in these legally obtained documents.
Apparently, PRSA has placed a fire-sale on its #PRSAICON International Conference registrations, underscoring weak demand by the PR industry workforce to attend a conference hosted by a PR cartel-driven association with these many problems and toxic culture issues:
More will follow on the corruption being uncovered in the Mickey Nall / Gator Mafia UF E-mail Tranche… Stay tuned!
Mary Beth West, APR, FPRCA, is a long-time whistleblower of misconduct in the PRSA public relations trade association. She has been a victim of long-term, illegal retaliation by PRSA cartel members and is the top source of legally obtained government records documenting PRSA illegal behavior. She can be followed on LinkedIn and X.