PRCA-UK Scraps “Sector for Solidarity” Amid CEO’s “Stalker” Claims
After years of curious claims that she's a "stalking" victim, PRCA CEO Sarah Waddington scraps "Sector for Solidarity" amid unforced errors.
PR 101 for Member-Association CEO Neophytes:
Never: 1) pre-announce a new, partisan political initiative 2) falsely packaged as a mere “for the good of the order” thing, 3) on an unfunded remit, 4) with a strategy that’s not even half-baked yet… all while 5) your cash is tanking, 6) half your continental neighborhood is on fire from politicized protests, and 7) you’ve otherwise claimed publicly for years you’re being “stalked” by various and sundry “trolls” while you 8) also claim female police in your area market are “incompetent” in fielding your alleged on-the-record reports to law enforcement which you 9) refuse to provide transparency about publicly in order to substantiate and prove the claims were ever even reported to police in the first place.
Long story short: There’s lots to unpack at the PRCA these days.
The U.K. Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) PR trade group still bills itself as “the world’s leading professional body for professionals in public relations, communications, and public affairs.”
It’s a suspicious claim, however, given that it seems that post-2022-23 — when *something happened* — many members voted with their feet, as reflected in subsequent-year PRCA financial filings to U.K. Companies House.
I’m presuming the PRCA’s cash collapse has been a revenue problem and not an overspending problem, although PRCA management is welcome to clarify, as I’ve asked repeatedly for some time now that they do so (they’ve ignored my queries).
Bottom line, based on current data, someone is going to need to quantify for me the PRCA’s whole “world’s leading” claim:
In fact, as the PRSA trade assoc here in the States makes its own false claims of “nothing to see here,” it’s interesting to do a side-by-side comparison of the PRSA and the PRCA on association finances.
Interesting, huh?…
Whatever its financial-flatlining origins, it would seem this precarious position is hardly the wisest moment for PR associations to launch risky, partisan messaging.
But sage counsel doesn’t appear to be welcomed in PRCA CEO Sarah Waddington‘s inner circle at the moment, nor was it ever, it appears.
For context, below are a few of Sarah Waddington CBE’s past tweets (she was owner of the now-deleted X handle, @Mrs_Wadds), all of which have been deleted, since Waddington shut down her X account in Q4 2024.
Here, she is documented to have tweeted that “William and Kate” (the future King and Queen of the United Kingdom) are “kryptonite,” as @Mrs_Wadds made it abundantly clear she is 100% on Team Meghan.
Not sure how her “kryptonite” remark flies with the man wearing the Crown, who very generously handed Sarah Waddington her CBE in 2022… but now might think better of it:
Earlier this year, at least from the springtime months forward (until about a month or so ago), Sarah Waddington was pounding the pavement of PR’s mean streets, informing everyone who would listen that SOMETHING BIG WAS COMING at the PRCA:
…The “Sector for Solidarity” Initiative, to fight “right-wing rhetoric,” CEO Waddington proclaimed, repeatedly… essentially declaring PRCA war on Conservatives.
For example, Waddington beat the drum of this partisan rebuke at the May 2026 AMEC Summit in Dublin (video clip, below):
Unethically couched in deceptive “ethics” framing (as if being anti-Conservative is the PR industry’s moral imperative), CEO Waddington repeatedly stated, essentially, that failure to support the U.K.’s disastrous Labour Party and / or the larger left-wing radical agenda will serve as grounds to be unwelcomed in the PRCA membership.
Following Waddington’s toxic and baseless remarks, PRovoke PR trade rag reporter Maja Pawinska Sims — who has quite a history of colluding with Waddington and serving as a Waddington mouthpiece — piled on further.
When Sims asked the dumbfounded AMEC Summit audience if they had “any questions for Sarah” following Waddington’s own “rhetoric” that day, a nervous wall of silence was met with Waddington’s maniacal laughter, saying (per the video clip above):
“I’ve scared everybody into submission!… <ha ha ha> Like, ‘SHIIIIIT!!!’… <ha ha ha ha ha ha…!>“
“She’s a pussycat, really…,” intoned Sycophant Sims. “…not that terrifying…”
One must therefore ask to what extent being of Conservative leaning places one in the Waddington PRCA Cartel cross-hairs.
…As in, perhaps even finding oneself under investigation for unspecified accusations — witch-hunt style — on mere grounds of being a Conservative:
As a reminder, the Bell Pottinger expulsion occurred after the Omnicom PR / advertising agency mega conglomerate — where CEO Waddington’s own husband Stephen had worked for years, via Ketchum — was <SOMEHOW!> allowed to place its own executives, including Mr. Waddington’s prior boss David Gallagher, on the PRCA Bell Pottinger adjudication panel to investigate its own rival, as I only just learned in the past year or so:
CEO Waddington prematurely promoted her so-called PRCA “Sector for Solidarity” campaign this year before it was properly countenanced, much less funded.
See this clip from a Propellernet podcast earlier this year (2026):
In the above clip, CEO Waddington appeared to lean out beyond her skis, by verbally committing other third-party PR associations to fund her “Solidarity” pet project… interjecting the names of the CIPR and Women in PR as co-sponsors, for example, whether either organization liked it (or was even aware) or not.
Then, late last month, the other shoe dropped:
The PRCA stopped the press on its “Sector for Solidarity” Whatever-It-Was.
A PRCA member friend sent to me this e-mail last week, that was issued by the PRCA in late September, stating that the “initiative needs to pause and reset.”
The small font above reads as follows:
As promised, sending through the notes from the call as well as the recording for reference.
Background and Meeting Purpose
- Sector of Solidarity initiative: originally conceived to amplify work of community groups (Asian Comms Network, People Like Us, UK Black Comms Network, Taylor Bennett Foundation, Socially Mobile, etc.)
- Two original objectives:
- Underline EDI efforts within the industry; create a safer, more productive environment
- Develop an external voice to educate government, business, and public on PR’s role in countering disinformation
- Creative brief developed from early stakeholder conversations; presented to pro bono partner Fight or Flight
- Fight or Flight feedback: “What makes it different? What are we actually offering?”
- Prompted deeper thinking about what the initiative actually delivers
Stakeholder Feedback and Key Tensions
- Community groups not primarily seeking funding; two recurring themes:
- Lack of clarity on what Sector of Solidarity actually does
- Inconsistency in PRCA’s public stance on key issues; desire for PRCA to “walk the walk”
- CIPR cited as a positive model for consistency
- Initiative still perceived as a PRCA project, despite intent for it to be community-led
- Consensus: moved too fast toward a creative campaign before building trust or defining the offer
- Someone raised core question of audience and impact
- Different groups have fundamentally different needs; one-size approach won’t work
- Need to work backwards from desired outcomes to shape the narrative
- Someone who has previously worked in the office of their CEO recommended focusing on parameters and tools rather than prescriptive guidance
- Organizations will always face competing pressures in the moment (leadership, politics, live pitches)
- More valuable to help people lean into conflict, understand risk, and lead difficult conversations
- DEI leads often bear all the heat with little support; this work could help them too
Reset Decision and Path Forward
- Group consensus: current format not working; initiative needs to pause and reset
- “Sector of Solidarity” name and structure questioned; may not be the right vehicle
- Agreed approach: build relationships first, then let the initiative take shape organically
- Partner on community group events, amplify their work, offer platform access (newsletter, speakers, podcast)
- Smaller, lower-stakes collaborations build trust before any formal structure
- Stakeholder mapping as the immediate next step
- Broaden beyond well-known groups to include newer ones (NICE, Nice and Spicy, LGBTQ+ focused groups)
- Identify 2-3 tangible things PRCA can offer each priority stakeholder
- Monthly meetings on hold until stakeholder picture is clearer
Lots to unpack (again). As a first point, the timing here matters.
Major civil unrest and LEFT-wing rhetoric-driven protests have fueled violence across Europe for weeks now, with lawlessness coinciding with the PRCA’s decision to pull the “Sector for Solidarity” plug (Exhibit A: France):
However, no word has been forthcoming from the PRCA to decry violence from the political left.
Instead, CEO Waddington has remained stone-silent on left-wing violence and lawlessness, choosing instead to demonize Conservatives and the political right-of-center.
Meanwhile, I noticed this tweet from last month, by left-wing extremist @IndiaWilloughby, likening the PRCA to the KKK hate group for the apparent mortal-sin of nominating the Sex Matters cause for a PRCA UK Award. (@sexmattersorg “campaigns for the recognition of biological sex in law, policy, and public language,” according to literature.)
This tweet almost made me feel sorry for CEO Waddington. But not quite:
Turns out, Waddington’s kowtowing to left-wing sycophants does nothing to pacify the extreme left wing or earn their love. These people prey upon and eat their own.
As such, the above memo from PRCA HQ pausing “Sector for Solidarity” begs more questions than it provides answers.
At a minimum, the PRCA’s “pause and reset” memo should have stated plainly that the PRCA (Waddington) had got it wrong on singularly blaming only one side of the political aisle, when the ills of society clearly are being fueled by extremists on the left every bit as much as anyone else, if not more so.
On the ethics front, it is also completely bogus for Sarah Waddington to decree in this memo that the PRCA trade association where she collects her paycheck should “amplify” the agenda of Socially Mobile CIC, a side-hustle that both CEO Waddington AND her PR agency husband Stephen run.
Sarah Waddington is still listed on Socially Mobile CIC at Companies House as an “Active” director, as is Stephen Waddington and Richard Houghton. Francis Ingham is listed as “resigned’ on 16 Nov 2021, about 18 months prior to his death.
This ongoing PRCA + Socially Mobile dual role held by Sarah Waddington raises serious conflict-of-interest concerns.
For starters, PRCA social media handles have been used (hijacked?) to amplify and propagate Socially Mobile’s agenda and to platform Team Waddington themselves for years, to excessive extent, even prior to Sarah Waddington being named “Interim CEO” after she joined the volunteer board in September 2023.
The hijacking is inclusive of the timeframe that now-deceased PRCA Director General + “resigned” Socially Mobile Board Director Francis Ingham was under merciless, psychologically catastrophic online attack by Waddington Socially Mobile “teachers” / surrogates (John Brown and Andy Barr — with John Brown then being an active “client” of Stephen Waddington, to boot).
In the wake of the attack (which included unspecified allegations that Francis Ingham was never allowed to have sight of), Francis Ingham deteriorated for a month in a Salisbury Hospital ward prior to his death on 16 March 2023.
During the month of March 2023, PRCA social handles were already propagating for Brand “Wadds” and Socially Mobile, without Socially Mobile ever even acknowledging their own dead former director.
In fact, Stephen Waddington called Francis Ingham his “foe“ and lamented what a difficult personality he thought Francis Ingham was and that it was no wonder Ingham had so many “enemies,” although one could argue Francis Ingham had few more unkind enemies than the Waddingtons themselves.
The body had scarcely been cremated before the PRCA handle was bizarrely hijacked again to trumpet schlock on how great the Waddingtons are, as per whomever was then controlling the PRCA Twitter handle:
The day before Sarah Waddington was named to the PRCA’s newly reconstituted Board in September 2023, she tweeted this sweary rant to a news media outlet, in an appalling display of a classless temper tantrum, in my opinion:
The PRCA then clicked its heels and continued platforming and repeatedly showcasing Team Waddington as a “power couple” with “fascinating careers,” into 2024:
For his part, Stephen Waddington’s employment history includes a long stint at Omnicom’s Ketchum during the PR firm’s Vladimir Putin / Russian Federation PR client heyday.
Ketchum / Omnicom scored mega-millions from its Russia engagement, including after deceptive messaging in 2015 implied Ketchum stopped working with Putin, when this claim did not accurately reflect reality.
Two headlines in March 2015 with very different messages:
The firm (Ketchum) was later tied in 2023 to a U.S. Department of Justice report (“The Durham Report”) on the Hillary Clinton disinformation campaign on “Russia Collusion” — for which Ketchum never faced PRCA adjudication nor any accountability whatsoever, even though the scam far exceeded misconduct of the Bell Pottinger scandal, for which Omnicom officials served on the adjudication panel against its own competitive rival.
The degree of certain anti-America U.K. PRs spreading irresponsible disinformation for their former (?) client, Vladimir Putin, was off-the chart:
Lots to unpack there, too. And you can read more, here.
At any rate, the late PRCA Director General was falsely claimed by the Waddingtons in their December 2023 Companies House filing to still serve on their ridiculous three-person “board” for Socially Mobile CIC, months and months after Francis Ingham was already deceased.
Now there’s a “governance” problem, to beat the band… not that the “scared into submission” U.K. PR crowd is either paying one iota of attention or would utter one word of critique, even if they did.
This exceptionally shocking Waddington error of claiming a dead man as a Socially Mobile board member nonetheless passed muster as no big deal to the PRCA’s Q4 2024 CEO hiring committee, whose identities we don’t know.
Now that CEO Waddington collects her past Socially Mobile co-director’s PRCA paycheck, I don’t know who precisely is buying Sarah Waddington’s rubbish about this so-called “Solidarity” PRCA group making for a “safer, more productive environment” (as per the pause-and-reset memo).
“Safer”… for whom?
“More productive”… for whom?
Certainly not “safer” for me.
Not even “safer” for Sarah Waddington, as she’s cast to the wolves online by the likes of an unhinged trans activist.
And certainly not “safer” for U.K. law-abiding citizens who vote Conservative or Reform or, in the U.S., Republican.
After all, CEO Waddington already declared jihad against them in her various PRCA road shows, with toxic rhetoric of her own and fully backed up / endorsed by the rogue PRovoke PR trade rag (which was quite happy to promote pro-Russia PR firms / advertisers, when it was fashionable and lucrative for them to do so… like in 2021).
The above PRCA memo finally got real, with its mea culpa about “Lack of clarity on what Sector of Solidarity actually does.“
No “clarity” about “Solidarity”???… It’s like a bad PR punchline.
I’ve read that PRCA memo about 10 times, and I still can’t figure out what Team Waddington was angling for, apart from a pro-Labour partisan political campaign, leveraged with hijacked PRCA member dollars that the PRCA arguably doesn’t even have.
PRSA in the U.S. did the very same thing in 2021 with its bogus “Voices 4 Everyone” campaign, which pointedly was only a “Voices for Liberal Democrats” effort, crafted by and for liberal Democrats. Sound familiar?
V4E died a slow death, as PRSA’s financials have continued tanking into near-insolvency. (It’s like these PR trade groups never talk to each other or share notes on what works and what doesn’t.)
And then this bit from the above PRCA memo: “Stakeholder mapping as the immediate next step…“
Umm…. ???… “Stakeholder mapping?
So… to be clear, Sarah Waddington has been barn-storming across the whole of the U.K. and internationally for months and months, announcing prematurely a “Sector for Solidarity” initiative, for which SHE’S STILL NOT EVEN BOTHERED TO IDENTIFY and SEGMENT HER STAKEHOLDERS YET?
Did this woman just fall off the PR Planning Turnip Truck?
“Amateurish” and “Rookie Mistake” don’t even begin to cover it, for this PRCA egg-on-face moment of “Ready! Fire! Aim!”
I literally laughed out loud at the memo line reading, “Develop an external voice to educate government, business, and public on PR’s role in countering disinformation.”
Earth to Waddington!… It’s more than a major undertaking to “counter disinformation” when your own outfit is engaging in plenty of it on your own (and platforming some of the industry’s biggest manufacturers of it, to boot).
Before he came under merciless attack in 2022 by certain Team Waddington surrogates with unnamed and unspecified and unsubstantiated accusations, the PRCA already enjoyed the benefits of a sound “external voice” who was successfully educating all kinds of stakeholders about PR and the PRCA, to strong financial impact and return on investment, until someone decided to kill the golden goose.
And that’s not all.
Sarah Waddington clearly doesn’t even have the money to fund her veiled, partisan-driven “Solidarity” notion yet.
Again: No kidding.
She was still pitching for funds, in the above-mentioned podcast video clip, months ago.
No competent CEO handles fundraising for a major initiative in this manner. You don’t announce publicly that something big and bold or “Nice and Spicy” is “Coming Soon!” on a named time-horizon, but soon thereafter reveal it’s an unfunded / unbudgeted mandate, that one can scarcely even define purpose-wise.
At a systemic level, what this grasping-for-straws communicates to me is that the PRCA’s membership registry may now be embellished online, with inclusion of firms’ names that have long-since jumped ship. (I welcome the PRCA to correct the record if my read is incorrect — but I require data reconciled to the PRCA’s most recently audited membership revenues. I won’t hold my breath.)
The matter of Sarah Waddington accepting her PRCA compensation in early 2025 into her husband’s PR firm’s bank account is also cause for concern — and overdue for explanations — given apparent false claims that Wadds, Inc., was “controlled by Sarah Waddington”:
Falsifying organizational claims and failing to follow through on “fit for purpose” promises from years ago underscore major integrity problems.
This documented fact pains me to have to write, as nothing would heal me more relative to my PRCA history than to feel authentically free and justified to go back to being among the PRCA’s biggest international cheerleaders, like in 2020:
But at present, I simply cannot do it, with the current leadership at the helm and their modus operandi.
Observing this lunacy has been exceptionally distressing to me (and, I’m sure to others who are just as concerned but less outspoken than I).
Further, it is my opinion — based on direct observation of evidence that is (and evidence that is not) in the public domain — that the current CEO, Sarah Waddington, came into her PRCA CEO role through bad-faith maneuvering.
Again… not an easy thing for me to write. But there it is.
To that point, I’ve registered numerous, written, documented, irrefutably substantiated complaints to the PRCA’s leadership, on this very matter, based on evidence.
These complaints initially received the PRCA’s regulation “Oh dear! We’ll review this immediately and get right back to you…” response, but later followed by the silent treatment… and then later — across all of 2026 — by full-on refusals-to-deal and even retaliation, without any adjudication or response or resolution to the originating concerns.
Sound familiar?
For her part, CEO Sarah Waddington is now playing the victim card — as ever.
In fact, Team Waddington’s go-to strategy in the face of push-back to her / their deeds always appears to be deploying their reliable phalanx of “flying monkeys” and certain “devious *uckers” (Stephen Waddington’s words) and various and sundry surrogates, to position the Waddingtons as long-suffering victims.
Even as early as February 2026 of this year — only weeks after I registered a barn-burner of an e-mail to PRCA Board Chair Kirsty Leighton, begging for PRCA adjudication of new evidence that came into my possession in January 2026 of potentially fraudulent prior PRCA-related misconduct dating back years to Bell Pottinger that merited immediate investigation — Sarah Waddington was out on the loose again, making audio-recorded yet unspecified and unsubstantiated and undocumented allegations … this time, making new claims about a so-called U.S. “troll.”
<Pause for appropriate gasps>
Yes, a Waddington “troll” from the United States of America.
Let’s all strap on our thinking caps, to noodle on who, precisely, Team Waddington is now aiming to target and intimidate.
All the while, CEO Waddington complained in this same podcast interview (originally posted in February 2026), in her customary victim posture, “I get a lot of *hit in this role…” (her words), while also conflating her new U.S. “trolling” accusations with prior U.K. “stalking” accusations dating back years ago, involving an unnamed someone-else, whom Sarah Waddington claimed that she and her husband Stephen once “volunteered with.”
Her “volunteered with” reference clearly makes it sound like Team Waddington had an unprosecuted PR industry “stalker” years ago, lurking around in the United Kingdom, whom Sarah referred to in another interview as a “she.”
Is your head spinning yet?
If not, then you’re remarkably un-curious.
Sarah Waddington has been re-hashing in 2026 her alleged U.K. “stalker” episode from pre-Ingham-Death years (roughly 2020-22 — although when and for how long her U.K. “stalker” was on the loose is still conflated and contradicted in Waddington’s own interviews from multiple prior podcasts).
Her “stalker” claims are unspecified and unsubstantiated and undocumented, relative to CEO Waddington coughing up any hard evidence to the industry, to back up her spectacular claims of being a “stalking” victim meriting police action.
Waddington has further claimed the Met (London Metropolitan Police) “cocked it up” (her words) on her “stalker” reports, circa 2021-22.
Yet CEO Waddington has not once presented any public-facing documentation of police reports registered or the like, to back up her fantastical “stalker” allegations.
She instead has taken to podcasts and blog posts with publicly unsubstantiated and undocumented accusations, to which she never has been held responsible, at least until now, given her role now as a U.K. PR industry public figure.
Like this podcast interview from November 2022 (below)… the same time period the now-deceased PRCA Director General came under public attack himself by Waddington surrogates, such as John Brown and Andy Barr (again: both of whom are Waddington Socially Mobile CIC “teachers”):
In this above podcast audio clip from November 2022, Sarah Waddington publicly claimed to have “lofty, secret aims” herself (?) but declined to reveal what on earth she was talking about.
She also claimed to have “uncovered a network of other people being trolled by the same person” as who also “stalked” / “trolled” her, allegedly.
Well now!
Let’s see.
Who — precisely — composed this “network“? Names, please, Mrs. Waddington?
And what a weird descriptor she assigned to these unnamed, alleged co-victims — a “network” (?) — of the same “stalker” person???
Aren’t people who compose “a network” usually the perpetrators of a crime, not the victims of it?
Did any of these “network” co-victims also reveal themselves on blogs or podcasts to stand in “solidarity” with Team Waddington, and to proclaim, “YES! I, too, am a stalking victim of <insert name here of perpetrator>!“
Interestingly, I hold significant, non-public evidence relative to this “network” claim by Sarah Waddington.
I firmly believe this evidence strongly suggests false / misleading prior claims.
If any actual “police reports” ever were indeed registered to the Met by Team Waddington, then those reports may have been either falsified or wildly embellished. If the Met actually has no record of receiving a police report in the first place, then that absence of a record would seem to verify a major fraud in and of itself.
Alternately, it’s possible the Waddingtons were merely annoyed with a PR colleauge who dared criticize them, slapped a “troll” label on that person, then perhaps proceeded to “report” this person to the police, at which time — and this is just my speculating here — the police laughed them straight out of the precinct office, also with a stern reminder that it’s a crime to file petty police reports and waste police resources.
I’ve asked both Waddingtons directly, in writing, to clarify what occurred here and to provide some documentation to back up Sarah Waddington’s repeated, years-long, fantastical “stalker” claims on multiple public-domain podcasts.
Only seeing the actual police reports (or hearing from Met Police that valid reports indeed were filed) will establish / corroborate their legitimacy. But so far, Team Waddington is remaining nonresponsive and beyond evasive on my direct questions about it, with Sarah Waddington pivoting now instead to being the new “victim” of a “U.S. troll.”
In Sarah Waddington’s November 2022 “Good Journeys” podcast interview and then later in her “Making Marketing Mistakes” podcast interview of 2026, she revealed more of her odd (my opinion) nature… even discussing her 2017 “Sleeping Beauty” #MeToo tweet and “viral” episode.
Heard about this doozey, yet?
According to Sarah Waddington, she publicly advocated at that time (2017) for the classic fairy tale book “Sleeping Beauty” to be removed from U.K. schools because of what she said were #MeToo implications of “consent” (since the Prince in the story kisses Sleeping Beauty while she’s, you know, sleeping, since that’s what Sleeping Beauty did).
Waddington claimed in the November 2022 podcast interview that her tweet was “misrepresented” in the news media coverage, although precisely how, she did not make clear.
It’s strange, how every time Sarah Waddington makes her own mistake or embarrasses herself, it’s always someone else’s fault.
…In this case, she claimed it was the news media’s fault, for “misreporting” something. (They didn’t misreport anything.)
@Mrs_Wadds has since deleted her entire Twitter / X handle during the Q4 2024 ramp-up to her being named “Interim CEO” of the PRCA, thus deleting all her prior tweets.
It’s pretty clear why. Much of her tweet history was beyond whack-a-doodle.
As per her 2022-2026 U.K. “stalker” allegations, I already asked CEO Waddington more than a month ago — in writing — to please provide specifics about her alleged police reports.
So far, she has refused to respond in any way, as evidenced by the fact she has refused even to acknowledge receipt of my query, as has PRCA Chair Kirsty Leighton, who was copied (partial excerpt of my e-mail to both women, below):
LinkedIn Post, below: https://lnkd.in/p/eBMX4sNc
I have also asked Met Police public affairs personnel (see excerpt below) to please provide at least a confirmation of a police report received from the Waddingtons, pertaining to these “stalker” claims as publicly alleged.
However, I cannot seem to get a response there, either.
I e-mailed Met Police Chief Communications and Engagement Officer Sharon Sawers on 2 October but have heard nothing back.
Interestingly, Ms. Sawers also was invited by CEO Waddington in recent months to headline a PRCA Conference panel on the ironic topics of, “What’s Truth Got to Do With It?” and “Policing Misinformation“…
I’ve also asked PRCA leadership over this past year (dating back to December 2025 / January 2026) to please contact U.K. law enforcement themselves to engage a proper investigation on two separate matters, with my volunteering to provide information to police, myself.
They (meaning CEO Waddington and Chair Leighton) have refused to contact police, unless what they’re doing versus what they’re communicating to me — by way of commission and omission — are two different things.
My opinion — and brass tacks here: I, for one, think CEO Waddington’s prior “stalking” stories are lacking in truth / veracity.
I also believe The Waddington Way is potentially to leverage threats of accusing legitimate critics as being “trolls” and “stalkers,” as a means of shutting down valid criticism, by intimidating people and instilling overwhelming fear of being wrongfully accused and potentially even losing one’s career over it (and weaponizing trade bodies to help do precisely that).
That sort of manipulation is not just unethical. It’s criminal.
For me, CEO Waddington’s Elizabeth Holmes-ish body language in this April 2024 interview (below) is akin to feeling ice run through my veins, as tell-tale visual cues in storytelling that appear to underscore tall tales (my opinion).
Back in real-time, when CEO Waddington was taking to multiple public podcasts to air her active “stalker” grievances while she claimed an “active” Metropolitan Police investigation was ongoing, Waddington’s behaviors seemed to counter what any law enforcement agency would ever advise a legitimate crime “victim” to do.
Policing best practice is to advise a verified “stalking” victim NOT to air details of an active investigation — or that there even is a police investigation at hand.
Police generally advise not to tip off the alleged “stalker” that their activities and tactics and techniques of “stalking” are even being surveilled / analyzed, so that a real perpetrator can more readily be caught in the act and duly prosecuted.
Yet CEO Waddington blurted out significant details, in this November 2022 long-form podcast interview about the then-active so-called “investigation” that she claimed Met Police were then undertaking in real time.
She did it again in February 2026 — this year — on the aptly named “Making Marketing Mistakes” podcast:
I personally believe a tidal wave of disinformation has been unleashed for years, to drum up a falsified basis for public / industry sympathy for certain people, strictly as a diversionary and gaslighting tactic, to deceive and to angle for more power.
And it seems that for some people, this toxic, unethical, and even potentially illegal + fraudulent strategy has worked.
For these and other reasons, I firmly believe the so-called “Sector for Solidarity” campaign is indeed dead-in-the-water, but not for the reasons CEO Waddington claims.
An investigation is in order, now that the PRCA has finally sorted its “Standards Committee” personnel chaos of earlier this year (2026):
Based in the U.S. and with a more than 30-year career, Mary Beth West, APR, FPRCA, has been an active whistleblower of documented corruption in the PR industry, for some 10 years, including identification of illegal cartel and antitrust violations.