About Mary Beth
Based in the Southeastern United States, Mary Beth West delivers competitive impact for clients and other organizations through strategic communications, helping them build credible, trust-driven relationships and brand reputations with diverse stakeholders who are critical to mission-driven and financial success.
In her 25-year career – including a 15-year consulting practice that she founded, grew and later sold in January 2018 to Knoxville-based Fletcher PR (another woman-owned firm) – Mary Beth’s leadership has forged her national reputation in the U.S. as a bold advocate for communications ethics and integrity. Her stands for ethical compliance and accountability within the U.S.-based public relations sector has placed her -- at times -- squarely at odds with some U.S. leaders in the profession. She holds the distinction of being the first member of the 18,000-member Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) who -- in the organization's 70-plus year history -- has brought to a floor vote ethics-reform bylaw proposals as an individual member.
Her commentary has been included in The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, the USA Today Network, The Public Relations Strategist and other business publications. Accredited in Public Relations (APR) by the PRSA-affiliated Universal Accreditation Board, Mary Beth is a past recipient of PRSA’s National David Ferguson Award, honoring her contributions to the advancement of public relations education in the United States. At age 29, Mary Beth was the youngest person at that time (2002-03) to be elected to PRSA's national board.
PRSA inducted Mary Beth into its College of Fellows in 2017, and the University of Tennessee honored Mary Beth as its Public Relations Alumna of the Year in 2013 – the first time the honor was bestowed.
Mary Beth serves actively on several non-profit and advisory boards, including her local community's hospital system and technical college, as well as the Tennessee statewide board of Nurture the Next (formerly Prevent Child Abuse Tennessee). For nine years, she has served on a community advisory board for the largest bank holding company based in Tennessee (and one of the 50 largest in the United States). A lifelong Tennessean, Mary Beth was born in Nashville and has lived in the Greater Knoxville area for 24 years with her husband, Charles, president of a fourth-generation family-owned franchise dealership for Chevrolet / General Motors. They have three daughters.