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We started HOW PR because too many important stories were being told wrong - or not at all.
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You don’t understand PR until you’ve been on the receiving end of it. Inside a newsroom, you watch hundreds of pitches land every week — most of them wrong about the outlet, wrong about the angle, and wrong about what the reporter actually needs. The leaders with the best pitches weren’t always the ones with the best stories. They were the ones working with publicists who understood the difference between pitching media and thinking like it.
That’s where HOW PR started. Not with a list of contacts. With a conviction that visibility is built backward — from the outcome a client actually needs, through the positioning that earns it, to the media strategy that activates it. Press is the last step of the work, not the first.
Marla Howell
Most publicists learn to think like a reporter. Marla was one.
She spent over fifteen years as a broadcast journalist and communications strategist — reporting and anchoring across Florida television and radio markets, pioneering Manatee County’s first Mobile Newsroom, and producing daily news coverage before moving into government communications at the City of Tampa. There, she led the award-winning media campaign for the city’s Litter Skimmer Trash Boat, a project that drew national attention to Tampa’s environmental work. Her campaigns for the University of South Florida drove measurable growth in donor and scholarship dollars.
That inside-the-industry experience is the foundation of HOW PR. Marla founded the firm in 2020 to do from the outside what she had been trained to do from the inside — build the narrative discipline, positioning, and media strategy that turn credible leaders into recognized ones. In 2024 alone, her team secured over 70 media features for clients, formed celebrity partnerships, and generated over 4 million in estimated media reach.
She is a member of the Public Relations Society of America, the Florida Public Relations Association, and the Tampa Bay Public Relations Society — and the founder of Arise and Reign Inc., a nonprofit supporting women in Tampa Bay.
Ernest Howell
Ernest co-founded HOW PR with Marla in 2020 and leads the firm as President. His focus is the business that makes the work possible — strategic direction, operations, client acquisition, and the partnerships that move the agency forward. While Marla leads the editorial and media strategy, Ernest builds the relationships, structures the engagements, and ensures every client signed is one HOW PR is built to serve.
He brings a results-driven approach to agency operations: streamlining how the team delivers for clients, cultivating the business development pipeline, and protecting the operational discipline that lets the creative work happen. His role is the reason HOW PR runs like a firm, not a freelance practice.
Ernest is a graduate of Barry University and lives in Tampa Bay with Marla and their family.
Madison Reedy
Maddie is a publicist and USF Zimmerman School of Advertising and Mass Communications graduate. She is passionate about entertainment PR and specializes in storytelling, media relations, and social media marketing. She thrives on crafting compelling narratives that connect audiences and create meaningful media impact.
Jasmine Agyemang, APR
Jasmine is an award-winning communications professional who is passionate about seeing clients' missions and visions come to fruition. Her background includes Fortune 500 corporate communications and journalism, specializing in storytelling through media relations, social media, and digital content.
How we operate.
Three principles shape every engagement. They’re not values on a wall.
They’re how the work actually gets made.
Strategy before story.
Every narrative we build starts from positioning, not pitching. If the position isn’t sharp, nothing downstream will land.
Media fluency at every level.
We don’t pitch media from the outside. Our team has reported, produced, and made editorial decisions inside newsrooms and government comms offices. That changes how we think, write, and build relationships.
Visibility must produce outcomes.
If a placement doesn’t move credibility, funding, clients, or influence forward, we don’t count it as a win. Impressions aren’t a substitute for impact.
Now that you know the firm, let’s talk about yours.
A discovery call is a 30-minute conversation — no pitch deck, no generic proposal. We’ll look at where your visibility actually stands, where it needs to go, and whether HOW PR is the right partner for the work ahead.
