PRSA Past Chair Clique Pitched Fit Over No Fancy Fête for Selves
New e-mails reveal a clique of PRSA Past National Presidents pitched a fit in 2023 over a downsized ICON dinner to fête themselves.
Many failed organizations — upon completion of the post-mortem — clearly had one or more key culprits who drove the downfall… often by way of ego, incompetence, or some combination of the two.
In the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), the guilty clique most culpable for PRSA’s failure is easily a specific social cohort within the PR trade group’s Past Presidents Council, or PPC — the association’s past national presidents / chairs of the association, from years past.
Among fascinating new tranches of publicly discovered government open-record e-mails I obtained from the University of Florida in recent weeks, I could not help but marvel at the degree of self-aggrandizing fury voiced by certain members of PRSA’s Past Presidents Council, back in 2023.
What drove their angst and gnashing of teeth?…
Lack of budget to celebrate / wine / dine / toast THEMSELVES during PRSA’s annual “ICON” international conference that year.
The series of e-mails I legally obtained from Gator Mickey Nall’s trove of thousands of PRSA-related documents reveal that numerous PRSA Past Chairs in 2023 ranged from merely woeful to outright LIVID over downsizing of the PRSA ICON customary “Past Presidents Dinner” that year in Nashville, as announced by then-CEO Linda Thomas Brooks.
The e-mail correspondences reveal ugly sentiments by specific PRSA Past Chairs aimed at PRSA staff — even though everyone in PRSA with a brain has known for years that PRSA is losing money hand-over-fist… and has been doing so, for years now.
The losses largely are due to PRSA’s own inept Board…
…many members of whom are, in my close observation, mere puppets to specific PRSA Past Presidents Council members themselves.
Some — not all, but some — PPC folks cannot seem to let go of their rabid desire for power and trophies and medals and grandstanding in this sorry little club, masquerading as a legitimate trade association.
Despite dire financial realities back in 2023 (then-PRSA Chair Michelle Egan lost a quarter-million dollars that year of member funds), some of PRSA’s Past Chairs expressed anger over their elitist, private “Past Presidents Dinner” — traditionally a seated, multi-course affair with wine and other booze generously flowing — being downgraded from black-tie to more casual:
Upon receiving this decree, Past Chair Mickey Nall of the University of Florida fired off a temper tantrum via e-mail to his own select group of his PRSA Past Prez BFFs (Tony D’Angelo, Gary McCormick, Del Galloway, Jane Dvorak, Judy Phair, Kathy Barbour, Mike Cherenson, and Rosanna Fiske):
“…the Past President formal attire, actual dinner is no more!!! DOA in Nashville. Sad,” Nall wrote.
Before having to retire to his fainting couch, Nall deadpanned, “Wear your country music inspired upscale casual and just drink and stand around with snacks.”
Nall also opined of his happier, richer days and black-tie nights in PRSA, writing wistfully, “… I now get to be the Past Chair who can be sentimental and say things like, ‘back in the day, grasshopper, we had these beautiful, private, black-tie affairs to fete our leaders, you should have seen us…then.'”
Past Chair Gary McCormick was so perturbed by the CEO’s news about his PPC dinner plans, that he suggested via e-mail something of a mutiny, by showing up in black tie and sequins anyway instead of “cowboy casual” on the designated Sunday evening of ICON, to keep to the PPC’s “tradition” and, I presume, to show PRSA’s CEO who’s really boss:
One fellow PRSA Past Chair, Mike Cherenson, chimed in to Nall’s email thread, to harumph his frustration, too.
In fact, it’s safe to observe that Mike Cherenson threw his toys out of his pram.
Cherenson whined of Linda Thomas Brooks’ mortal sin of placing this august group “at the kid’s table,” he wrote (which I presume means that Mike perceives the status of all PRSA members who aren’t fancy PPC folks like him as just a bunch of industry toddlers).
Cherenson even made a false-equivalency, that this (overdue) budget cut of downsizing the Past Presidents event had the affrontery of violating the very “culture and values of PRSA” writ large, indicative of PRSA’s staff showing “less value for senior volunteers overall.”
<cue the eye-roll>
Not to be outdone, then-Wells Fargo PR flack and fellow Mickey Nall Gator alumnus Del Galloway galloped into the e-mail thread, with guns blazing.
In an e-mail tonality somewhere between a “Queer Eye” TV show co-host audition and a Butterfly McQueen panic attack that THE YANKEES WERE COMIN‘ to burn down Nashville and the Past Prez vaunted dinner along with it:
“Well, there you have it,” Galloway fumed, virtual hand on hip.
“Moving froward (sic), I’ll now require advance reviews of clothing options. Or, is it clothing optional?!? Requirements include previews of fabric swatches, color schemes and lighting. ALWAYS good lighting.”
Then, from stage left, the Court Jester of the PRSA Brain Trust, Jane Dvorak, flounced into the queue…
…a woman who posts about “giggling” non-stop, posts ribald and inappropriate content online, and routinely signs her e-mails in an auto-footer reading, “Snicker uncontrollably,” even if she’s sending condolences to someone about their dead mother.
Ego also readily in hand, Dvorak “snicker(ed) uncontrollably”:
“I’m all in for being dressed up and sassy with my medallion at the opening reception. Nothing like a group of PPC making an entrance, working a room and sashaying off to another VIP event! It’s what we do.”
Too ignorant even to realize the truth — (Yes, Jane, this is indeed “a cost-cutting measure”) — Dvorak placed her own cluelessness on full display, with her own dig thrown at PRSA staff for full, unfair measure:
Self-described as the “snarky” self-styled fashionista of the cabal (see prior Twitter post below, for reference), Rosanne Fiske also joined in the fray, as a Friend of Mickey and fellow Gator:
Fiske yearned out-loud in her e-mail response for “Queen for a Day” memories and openly admitted — essentially — that she also looks down her nose at darkening the door at the PRSA ICON opening reception to intermingle with PRSA’s regular-member peasantry... opting instead to hang out at the bar or wherever she can score a free drink, apparently:
Per reference above, if these people are rich enough to own so much formalwear as to need “an Excel spreadsheet” to catalog their tuxes, etc., then why on earth didn’t they just chip in and pay personally for this event themselves that they thought they deserved so much?
It’s all the more indicative of these specific individuals having grown accustomed to PRSA (members) picking up these errant has-beens’ self-incurred tabs, whether it’s their bar bill or their legal defense fund:
Which brings me to PRSA’s financial problems…
Now, three years later in 2026, PRSA is secretly grappling with whether or not the Society will even make it to 2027 outside of bankruptcy court:
At this writing, PRSA’s financial make-or-break International Conference is taking place in Orlando, after placing registrations on a fire-sale last month, underscoring just how much trouble PRSA is in, financially and reputationally:
The Mickey Nall E-mail Tranche has revealed other shocking insights about former PRSA CEO Linda Thomas Brooks and CFO Philip Bonaventura allegedly having been “fired”…
…at least as per a secretive written admission back in January 2026, by current 2026 PRSA Chair Heide Harrell, who presumed this news-bomb of PRSA’s CEO + CFO “firing” was open knowledge across PRSA and the PR industry (I can assure you, it was not):
The Mickey Nall e-mail tranche further has revealed that Past Chair Mickey Nall himself is no stranger to knowing intimately of PRSA’s culture problems.
I mean, good grief. Read here of Nall’s own assessment of the PRSA College of Fellows:
And Mickey Nall thinks he and his cadre of like-minded PRSA cabal members deserve an annual celebration of themselves? Of PRSA “mean girls” “traditions” and culture?
Suffice to say, the entire situation in PRSA is really messed up.
As with any organization that is ruled (bullied) and shadow-governed by a village of (un)useful and unelected idiots, it’s clear that PRSA’s race-to-the-bottom toward its own bankruptcy filing has only been facilitated by a gaggle of self-interested individuals.
Mickey Nall & Friends seem only to care about “sashaying” around at their (under-sold) conference to flaunt airs of self-importance… not caring one whit about the very real needs and challenges faced by the PR industry workforce. And that’s what’s really sad about PRSA, among other things.
Mary Beth West has reported about PRSA’s financial misconduct and illegal non-reporting of losses and discrepancies, for some eight years, resulting in illegal retaliation mounted by all of the aforementioned Past Presidents Council cartel members against her.