Courtesy photo.
OXNARD — Standing up for the truth—that’s what Paula Pedene did as an employee at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care System when she disclosed the mismanagement of funds and reported a hostile work environment to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG). Pedene will share her experience as a whistleblower and the retaliation that followed at the Wednesday, Nov. 30 Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Gold Coast Chapter meeting.
The meeting will begin at 8 a.m. with networking, followed by the program presentation from 8:30-9:30 a.m. The event will be held at Cal Lutheran University/Oxnard Center, 2201 Outlet Center Drive, Suite 600, Oxnard.
Pedene worked in collaboration with Dr. Sam Foote to disclose information to OIG, which verified her disclosures in 2011. The following year however, Pedene was removed from her public affairs officer role, which she’d held for 20 years and was moved to the basement to work as a clerk in the VA library. She filed a whistleblower case against the VA. Not to be deterred, she listened closely to veterans about long wait times and delays and discovered a “Secret Wait List.” Again, in collaboration with Dr. Foote, she exposed the wait time issues to the OIG, which verified her findings in a 2014 report. In that same year, Pedene won her whistleblower case against the VA.
Pedene is a Service Disabled Veteran. She served in the Navy during the Cold War and Desert Storm. After an honorable discharge she became a correspondent in Washington, D.C. for Cox Broadcasting and the U.S. Information Agency covering issues such as the Iran Contra Affair and the release of Nelson Mandela. She was hired by For Veterans Only to serve as an anchor, producer and reporter for its TV show broadcast on PBS. When the show lost its funding Padene became the first fulltime Public Affairs Officer at the Buffalo VA. Her VA career includes assignments at Denver, Phoenix and Washington, D.C. spanning more than 30 years.
Pedene, co-owner of Pedene Public Relations in Scottsdale, Arizona, earned three PRSA Silver Anvil awards for best public relations practices for her work with the VA; one in Institutional Programs, another for Reputation Management and a third for Community Outreach. She’s earned dozens of other national and local awards and was cited for having the best VA public relations program nationwide. She is an accredited public relations practitioner and was inducted into the PRSA College of Fellows in Nov. 2016.
The PRSA meeting is open to the public, and advance reservations are required. Admission is $10 for students with ID, $20 for PRSA members and $30 for non-members. A light breakfast is served. To register, visit www.prsagoldcoast.org.
For more information contact Nancy Gill, chapter treasurer, at nancy.gill@csuci.edu or 805-437-8456.
PRSA is a nonprofit organization chartered in 1947 and the world’s largest organization of public relations professionals with more than 21,000 public relations and communications professionals across the United States. The California Gold Coast Chapter was founded in 2014 and serves Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties. For more information, visit www.prsagoldcoast.org.