The Public Relations Society of America has approximately 30,000 members across 110 chapters. It is the largest PR trade association in the United States. Its IRS Form 990 filings are public. Everything-PR reviewed twelve years of PRSA's 990 filings, from fiscal 2013 through fiscal 2024, and compiled the results in the 2026 PR Executive Compensation Index.
PRSA reports approximately $11 to $12 million in annual revenue across recent fiscal years, with roughly 60 to 65 percent from member dues and most of the balance from the annual PRSA Icon conference, accreditation fees, and Public Relations Journal advertising. The Society employs approximately 40 people at its 120 Wall Street headquarters in New York. Its fiscal year runs on the calendar. Its EIN is 13-1582190.
The record over twelve years shows something the PR industry rarely discusses: PRSA has largely selected association, media and business executives to run the organization rather than career public relations practitioners. The longest-tenured operational leaders inside the Society sit in the senior VP tier — and several of them have been there longer than the CEOs.
This is a history of who has been paid, how much, and what it says about how the largest PR association in America has operated.
The four CEOs of the past twelve years
PRSA has had four chief executives since 2013: William M. Murray, Joseph P. Truncale, Philip T. Bonaventura (twice, in two interim stretches), and Linda Thomas Brooks. The CEO seat sits under an annual delegate Assembly and a rotating board of directors — governance structures inherited from PRSA's 1947 founding as the merger of the American Council on Public Relations and the National Association of Public Relations Counsel. Each CEO transition since 2013 happened for a different reason. Each executive was paid differently. And each hire signals something specific about what PRSA's board wanted at the time.
William M. Murray — 2007 to March 2014
Murray was named Chief Operating Officer of PRSA in 2007. On October 20, 2013, the PRSA Assembly formally gave him the title of Chief Executive Officer. Before that, for more than sixty years, PRSA's CEO title had been held by an elected volunteer officer of the Society, not by paid staff. Murray was the first professional executive to formally hold the CEO title.
His compensation, per Form 990:
- 2013 — $375,805 (with an additional bonus/incentive of approximately $63,058 disclosed separately by the O'Dwyer Company)
- 2014 — $225,566 (partial year; he resigned March 7, 2014)
Murray announced his resignation on March 7, 2014, five months into his formal CEO tenure. His public statement was that "the time has come for me to leave PRSA and pursue new challenges." He had been with PRSA for seven years overall. He did not name a next role.
Joseph P. Truncale — January 2015 to December 2019
PRSA's board took nearly a year to find Murray's successor. On November 3, 2014, the Society announced Joseph P. Truncale as its next CEO. He started in January 2015 on a five-year contract that spanned two chair cycles of PRSA's board.
Truncale was not a PR professional. He held a Ph.D. in Media, Culture and Communications from New York University. He had spent thirty years at the National Association for Printing Leadership (NAPL) — joining as director of member relations in December 1984, becoming executive vice president in 1991, and serving as president and CEO from 2002 until his move to PRSA. He was hired for association-management experience, not PR craft.
His compensation, per Form 990:
- 2015 — $371,152
- 2016 — $411,798
- 2017 — $421,536
- 2018 — $425,009
- 2019 — $416,046
- 2020 — $104,981 (post-departure payments; retired December 31, 2019)
On December 18, 2018, PRSA announced Truncale would retire at the end of 2019 upon completion of his five-year contract. He founded a consultancy, Alexander Joseph & Associates, and has since taught graduate courses at NYU as an adjunct professor. Total compensation over his five full years at PRSA: approximately $2.05 million.
Philip T. Bonaventura — Interim CEO, January 2020 to January 2021 (and again from January 2025)
Bonaventura has been PRSA's Chief Financial Officer since 2007 — eighteen years, longer than any other executive at the organization. He is also PRSA's designated Form 990 signatory as CFO, meaning he is the officer of record on every one of the twelve years of disclosure summarized here.
Following the December 2018 announcement of Truncale's contract-end retirement, PRSA's board designated Bonaventura as CEO-in-waiting during 2019, assigning him additional executive responsibilities in preparation for the transition. The Interim CEO title took full effect on January 1, 2020, immediately after Truncale's departure on December 31, 2019. Bonaventura carried both titles — Interim CEO and CFO — for a full year while the board searched for a permanent replacement.
His compensation, per Form 990, tracks the change in his responsibilities almost perfectly:
- 2014 — $233,143 (CFO)
- 2015 — $221,492 (CFO)
- 2016 — $247,061 (CFO)
- 2017 — $261,347 (CFO)
- 2018 — $272,963 (CFO)
- 2019 — $388,323 (CFO with expanded transition duties — jump of $115,360)
- 2020 — $405,060 (Interim CEO/CFO — full year in the dual role)
- 2021 — $399,546 (returned to CFO only)
- 2022 — $272,666 (CFO)
- 2023 — $288,917 (CFO)
- 2024 — $301,223 (CFO)
Bonaventura returned to Interim CEO on January 1, 2025 following Linda Thomas Brooks' departure. His 2025 compensation figure will appear in PRSA's fiscal 2025 Form 990, filed in 2026.
Linda Thomas Brooks — January 2021 to December 2024
Thomas Brooks was announced as PRSA's new CEO on January 11, 2021, and started January 19, 2021. She came to PRSA from association and media leadership, not from the PR agency world.
Her prior roles: President and CEO of the Association of Magazine Media (MPA) from 2016 to late 2019; before that Executive Vice President and Managing Director of GM MediaWorks, the standalone General Motors media agency at Publicis's Starcom MediaVest; and before that President of Ingenuity Media at The Martin Agency in Richmond. Earlier in her career, she co-founded Gear Digital, an omnichannel agency, and held roles at Trilogy and Fox Associates. Her degree is a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from Ohio State University.
Her compensation, per Form 990:
- 2021 — $391,464
- 2022 — $415,295
- 2023 — $424,072
- 2024 — $455,403
Total compensation over her four years at PRSA: approximately $1.69 million. Thomas Brooks left PRSA at the end of December 2024. She has publicly described the departure as the end of "eight years running industry associations" — the four at MPA plus the four at PRSA — and said she is now considering where her expertise can "best move the needle in a new way."
The senior VPs — where the real tenure is
The CEO seat has turned over three times in twelve years. The senior VP tier has not. Everything-PR Research documented the compensation of PRSA senior staff across the same twelve-year window. Several of them have been there longer than every CEO except Bonaventura.
Jeneen Garcia — 12+ years and counting
Garcia is the longest-tenured senior programs executive documented in PRSA's 990 filings across this period. Her titles have shifted, but she has been listed continuously from 2013 through 2024:
- 2013 — VP, Education / SVP, Programs — $139,754
- 2014 — VP, Education — $148,164
- 2015 — VP, Education — $149,342
- 2018 — VP, Education — $150,791
- 2019 — Executive Director, PRSSA — $153,313
- 2020 — SVP, Programs — $159,571
- 2021 — SVP, Programs — $173,497
- 2022 — SVP, Programs — $175,495
- 2023 — SVP, Programs — $177,819
- 2024 — SVP, Programs — $186,768
Garcia's title arc — VP Education → Executive Director of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) → SVP Programs — tracks a broader reorganization of PRSA's education and student-programs functions into a single senior program office. PRSSA, the student affiliate Garcia ran before her SVP promotion, comprises approximately 10,000 student members at 375+ college chapters, making it the largest sub-population inside the PRSA orbit and a key long-run recruiting funnel for the full Society. Garcia has served under Murray, Truncale, both Bonaventura interim tenures, and Thomas Brooks.
The rest of the long-tenured senior tier
Four other senior executives sit alongside Garcia and Bonaventura as the multi-year operational spine of the Society. Compensation across the twelve-year window sits in the $140,000-$190,000 band:
- John D. Robinson — VP, Corporate Development, 2013 through at least 2022; also referenced as PRSA's marketing officer. Compensation from $156,330 (2013) to $169,239 (2019).
- Karla Voth — VP, Special Events & Programs, 2013 through 2020. Compensation from $150,151 to $177,834.
- Alex Ortiz — VP, Information Technology, 2015 through 2024. Compensation from $140,731 to $167,197.
- Jay Starr — SVP, Member Services, 2016 through 2022, overseeing PRSA's largest revenue stream — membership dues. Compensation from $170,861 to $189,495.
The Chief Communications Officer chair
Two different people have held the Chief Communications Officer title at PRSA in the past decade:
- Laura Kane Mullahy — 2017 to 2018 ($147,261 to $219,468)
- Karen Mateo — 2021 to 2024 ($162,043 to $175,284)
The CMO chair has similarly turned over — Maureen Walsh from 2020 to 2022 ($153,778 to $182,631), then Anna Yudina in 2024 ($160,511).
What the pattern shows
Three findings emerge from the twelve-year record.
First: PRSA's CEO chair has largely been filled by association, media and business executives rather than career PR practitioners. Murray was a longtime PRSA staff executive promoted internally. Truncale ran a printing trade association for thirty years before PRSA. Thomas Brooks ran magazine media associations and worked in ad and media agencies before PRSA. Only Bonaventura, the twice-interim CEO, has spent most of his professional career inside PRSA — and he is the CFO, not a PR practitioner.
Second: much of PRSA's operational continuity has come from long-tenured senior executives. Garcia (SVP Programs, 12+ years documented), Robinson (VP Corporate Development, 10+ years documented), Ortiz (VP IT, 10 years documented), Voth (VP Special Events & Programs, 8 years documented), Starr (SVP Member Services, 7 years documented), and Bonaventura (CFO, 18 years) are the multi-year operational spine of the organization. Their compensation sits in the $150,000-$200,000 band. They have outlasted every CEO except each other.
Third: PRSA CEO compensation runs at roughly 3.5 to 4 percent of the Society's total annual revenue — a normal band for U.S. professional associations of similar scale, and a fraction of the CEO-to-revenue ratios common at private communications firms of comparable size. Thomas Brooks earned $455,403 in 2024 against approximately $11 to $12 million in Society revenue. In the same year, Philippe Krakowsky at IPG earned $16.43 million; John Wren at Omnicom earned $21.69 million; Yannick Bolloré at Havas earned €9.90 million. This is not a criticism. It is a description of what PRSA is: a nonprofit trade association with 30,000 members and roughly 40 employees, whose senior pay bands mirror midsize professional-service partner compensation, not agency C-suite compensation. Full documentation of the comparable holding-company CEO pay bands is in the 2026 PR Executive Compensation Index.
The open questions
PRSA's Form 990 filings do not disclose two things members regularly ask about: (1) the size of the CEO severance and separation packages paid on the way out (Murray in 2014, Truncale at end of 2019, Thomas Brooks at end of 2024); and (2) the specific structure of the executive employment contracts, including bonus targets, deferred compensation, and consulting agreements post-departure. Those numbers surface in the Form 990 only after they are paid, sometimes across multiple filing years.
The 2025 Form 990, which PRSA will file in 2026, will show the first full year of Bonaventura's second Interim CEO tenure and the closing payments for Thomas Brooks. Everything-PR Research will update the Index when the filing becomes public on ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer.
This piece is part of Everything-PR Research coverage built on the 2026 PR Executive Compensation Index, Everything-PR's cumulative record of publicly disclosed executive compensation across the PR, communications and marketing services industry. Sources: PRSA IRS Form 990 filings 2013-2024 (EIN 13-1582190) via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer; PRSA official announcements; The O'Dwyer Company; PRSay; MediaPost; Fox Associates.
Edited on Jul 14, 2026
