On Tuesday, March 5, 2024, the City of Laurel received an Award of Excellence from the Pine Belt Chapter of the Public Relations Association of Mississippi during their annual Spark awards ceremony. Laurel Public Relations Specialist Kat Romero, attended the event where she was also sworn into the chapter’s board of directors where she has served since 2022.
The award is the latest in a string of public relations accolades for the city which began accumulating last February when the city received a Certificate of Merit and an Award of Excellence from the Pine Belt PRAM chapter. These were followed by an Award of Excellence at the state level of PRAM during their annual PRISM awards ceremony last spring and a Lantern Award from the Southern Public Relations Federation (SPRF) in September.
These awards recognized the city’s newly redesigned website and efforts to improve the city’s online and social media presence.
In addition to recognizing the City of Laurel’s contributions, the Pine Belt Chapter of PRAM has also recognized the work of many Laurel institutions.
For the last two years, the chapter’s Pine Belt Public Image Award has gone to a Laurel organization. The award recognizes a Pine Belt area business or individual for work that enhances the public image of the Pine Belt area “on a regional or national scale, or which greatly increases the quality of life of a segment of the area’s residents or the region as a whole.” The chapter began conferring this award in 2014. The first win for an organization in Laurel came in 2022 when Laurel Main Street won the award and was followed by the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in 2023. (No award was presented for 2024.)
