🎤 Voices & Values: A Conversation on Ethics

April 4, 2026 - GMU PRSSA and Mason Comm. Ambassadors collaborated on an event to bring students and faculty into discussion with communications professionals on the topic of ethics in our field. We were honored to invite the following guest speakers: 

• Oriella Mejia: District Director in the Virginia State Senate, Commissioner for Prince William County Parks and Recreation 

• Crystal Borde: Vice President and Community-Driven Communications Practice Lead for Vanguard Communications, former President of the DC Chapter of PRSA 

• Samantha Villegas: Principal Consultant and former Director of Strategic Communication Services for Raftelis, former President and Ethics Chairs of the DC Chapter of PRSA

Students were invited to pose questions to our guest speakers about what ethics meant to them and how ethics have been applied in their careers. The discussion was moderated by PRSSA President Chloe Miller. Check below for the great questions and answers from the meeting! ⬇️

Q: What does ethical communication mean to you?

Mejia: It’s super important to maintain trust. People are going to provide you with their whole lives and their darkest moments and you have to convey to them that they can trust you with highlighting their story. People have to trust you with their issue and you want to let them know they aren’t going through it alone. 

Villegas: You need to know the difference between morals and ethics. Morals are your internal beliefs. Ethics are the decisions you make that affect real people. The consequences of violating ethics are being fired or becoming an outcast in the professional community. Over my career, I grew to appreciate ethics as I matured professionally and gained a tactical mindset. There are impacts on organizations and people. Once I thought about ethics more, I saw more ethics breaches. 

Borde: I wasn’t thinking about that until Samantha mentioned it, but it’s true for me too. I really didn’t think about ethics a lot in my early career and that shifted when I became a decision maker. The word that comes up a lot with ethics is “responsibility”. Honesty is a part of ethics, but it is about asking ourselves how we are responsible to our clients and relationships. It’s less about “can” and more about “should”. You have different responsibilities per group that you work with.

Q: When it comes to ethics, do the obligations you have to the organization and the obligations you have to yourself change?

Villegas: It calls into question your loyalty to the organization. I’ll tell this story. My client was a water company that was going to bring business to a small town. They wanted me to craft their message to increase support for the company, but left off the part where it would double the resident’s cost of living. Your loyalty should be to the greater good, not to the client. Those can be at odds. You have to make a decision at that point. 

Borde: Sometimes there’s a price to doing the right thing. Play the long game. Remember how you will feel about that decision down the line. I can take the short-term negative consequences to feel better about myself as a professional. I want to retain credibility as a consultant. I would not shut off the voice in my head and trust my instincts. Things will always be very grey, not black and white. You may have fifteen conversations before you get that clarity. 

Q: How has the rise of misinformation and disinformation changed your approach to ethics?

Mejia: You have to reach out to your friends that are experts who can cross-reference information. You can have the correct information for most of your message, but even if it’s only 5% misinformation, that just ruins all of it. We’re still building trust in government roles and we have to take courses on how to be ethical. There’s a lot of misinformation online, but you can remind people that you took an oath and are sticking by that oath. Stick to the truth at all times, be cordial about it, and own up when you’ve made a mistake. 

Villegas: The impact that mis- and disinformation has had on my career has made it much more complicated and front and center today. There are days I wish social media and AI were not invented because people do not recognize mis- and disinformation. Everybody can talk, everybody can say anything and make it look real. As a consultant, my job is an educator, helping equip them with the tools and manpower to be proactive and drown out the noise that’s out there. You’re the expert, you should be the loudest source of information.

Borde: I’m constantly in that scenario right now. The most common service right now I’ve had is crisis communications. Misinformation and disinformation can start a crisis for an organization. Organizations think they have to move fast, but when you move fast, you miss information and details. Sometimes you don’t have to respond to it at all. The minute emotions get into play, the decision-making gets fuzzy. When you think about reputations, you have to think long-term. There are problems where we are not the best person to address. You can seek out third parties or you can be honest and tell your client that you do not have all the tools. 

Q: What happens if you’re in an organization where you’re afraid to speak out about unethical behavior for fear of backlash? 

Mejia: Now you have to ask yourself the question of ethical leadership. I started my own company to hire myself. Some companies wanted me to ignore the humanity aspect. My career started for people. People are the number one reason I work. Sometimes the ethical question comes down to “did you violate the code” and you may not have. It comes down to morals. You have to look at the values you have for yourself. That’s when you go from being just a worker to making a difference. 

Villegas: I’m in a senior role in my organization. They know I’m going to tell it like it is. If someone says something wrong in a meeting, I will call it out. Sometimes I have to be the only one to speak up, but then people will come to me and tell me that they were thinking the same thing. You’re not alone. 

Borde: Culture is a really, really important component of ethics. Paying attention to the culture of your workplace is important. Sometimes the decision is “what is it that I can live with” and “is this place right for me”. At the end of the day, if I’m going to be held responsible for something, I want to be held responsible for the right thing. Everybody has an ethical responsibility. Wherever you end up in the organization, you have an ethical responsibility and can be held accountable.

Q: When you’re the decisionmaker, if there’s no one above you, how do you hold yourself responsible?

Mejia: At one point, you’re just going to know things. I became a director at the age of twenty-five because I did the work. You will be the one doing the work in your own lives. You have to consider the impact, the long-term. You will just know. Ask your peers, but sometimes it will be sensitive material you can’t always ask your network and you just have to know. Having that wisdom to know when to ask for help is wonderful. 

Villegas: That speaks to the value of your network and the value that PRSA can bring to you. The network that I built through PRSA that could review things or gutcheck things was invaluable. So many things that I questioned, it was good to have that network. 

Borde: The “kitchen cabinet” is that informal group of people that support you - peers, PRSA, people in your life who aren’t in the field. The key is they need to be trusted people you respect. I have friends from college that I trust deeply. It can be an incredibly valuable network. There is a great benefit in finding people with different perspectives and experiences. You learn how to navigate and create relationships with people who are different from you. 

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We want to thank our amazing speakers again for taking the time again to share their experiences with students. 

To join in on these amazing conversations, check out PRSSA’s Instagram (@gmu_prssa) for more meeting dates and times! 

Author: Sandra Guerra