D. Parke Gibson Pioneer Award – Marsha R. Pitts-Phillips

Marsha R. Pitts-Phillips, President and Founder of MRPP & Associates Communications, LLC, is the recipient of the D. Parke Gibson Award. The award recognizes a PR professional who has helped expand awareness of PR with multicultural communities.

Pitts-Phillips is an accomplished communications leader whose career has included non-profit PR leadership, strategic consultation, broadcast journalism and educating the next generation of PR professionals at several universities in Minnesota. Throughout her distinguished career, she has been deeply committed to diversity, inclusion and cultural awareness, which she believes are business imperatives that should be woven into the fabric of – and reflected by – every professional entity. A long-time advocate for diversity, Pitts-Phillips was unanimously elected as the PRSA Minnesota Chapter’s Diversity and Inclusion Officer in 2019.

She was also instrumental in helping to establish the Multicultural Scholarship Endowment in collaboration with the PRSA Foundation and the PRSA National Diversity and Inclusion Committee. The fund was created in response to the tragic death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the ongoing issues of systemic racism. The PRSA Minnesota Chapter was the inaugural donor of this scholarship, which will empower rising diverse talent in the public relations industry.