About Mary Beth West, APR, FPRCA
Mary Beth West delivers competitive impact for organizations through the power of strategic management, communication, and relationship-building – helping executive teams build credible, trust-driven reputations with diverse stakeholders who are mission-critical to financial success.
She invests much of her time with philanthropic work focused on advancing the public relations industry and workforce development, in addition to other charitable organizations and causes.
Mary Beth served in recent years on the board of the London-based International Communications Consultancy Organisation (ICCO) and, following completion of her term in 2024, received alongside Rayne Strategy Group ICCO’s first-time “Special ICCO Global Award for Improving Society and Reputation of PR,” in recognition of her collaborative work advancing PR ethics. In 2023, she was awarded the international PRO PR GLOBE Award in Croatia.
Mary Beth’s commentary has been included in The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, the USA Today Network, Business Insider, PRweek, PR News, Strategic, and other business publications. She has spoken at international conferences and forums on public relations ethics and other timely topics, including in Belgrade, Davos, Dubai, Paris, Vienna and Warsaw.
The University of Tennessee honored Mary Beth as its Public Relations Alumna of the Year in 2013 – the first time the honor was bestowed, some two decades after faculty from UT’s College of Communication & Information named her as its 1994 Sammie Lynn Puett Public Relations Student of the Year and 1993 honoree of the J. Carroll Bateman Award. She was also a 1994 recipient of the UT Chancellor’s Citation for Extraordinary Campus Leadership and Service and served on the UT-CCI Dean’s Student Advisory Council.
Half of her 30-year career included entrepreneurship as founder of her own award-winning public relations consultancy, including clients such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory / Spallation Neutron Source, Smoky Mountain Tourism Development Authority, and Alcoa Inc. / Arconic. Her clients also included an array of grassroots advocacy campaigns producing measurable results in arenas such as promoting higher educational attainment in rural Tennessee and energy-conservation initiatives for investor-owned utilities across the U.S.
In recent years, Mary Beth has built an international reputation for change-agentry – particularly in matters related to taking a public stand for communications and business ethics, non-profit financial disclosures, whistleblower protection, and anti-retaliation.
She was the signature donor to the Washington, D.C.-based Ethics & Compliance Initiative’s ESG (Environmental / Social / Governance)-focused Business Integrity Library – a searchable database of best-practices from more than 150 of the most significant companies in the world.
Mary Beth co-founded the “Ms. InterPReted” PR Podcast, and her industry voice has helped dispel myths and misunderstandings about public relations, PR ethics, digital media, and larger strategic management issues.
The London, U.K.-based Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) – the world’s largest professional PR industry association – named Mary Beth as a Fellow (FPRCA) in summer 2022, following her prior appointment as a founding member and co-chair of the PRCA’s Global Ethics Council and as a member of the PRCA’s Global Advisory Council.
A graduate of Leadership Knoxville and Leadership Oak Ridge in East Tennessee and Young Leaders Council in Nashville, Mary Beth has served on scores of other non-profit and business advisory boards.