Georgella Muirhead talks PR, legacy and 98Forward

Georgella Muirhead never planned to become one of Michigan’s most influential communications leaders. She stumbled into public relations by accident, needing a college job and finding one at the front desk of Ann Arbor’s communications department.

Nearly five decades later, the pioneering executive is closing out an extraordinary career that reshaped Detroit’s civic storytelling and built Michigan’s largest Black woman-owned PR firm. As she prepares to retire at the end of 2025, Muirhead reflects on the mentors who believed in her, the bold campaigns that restored hope to overlooked neighborhoods, and the legacy she’s leaving for the next generation of communicators.

When you look back to the very beginning, what first drew you into public service and communications?

I had no idea what public relations was, and I needed a job. I was a student, and the city of Ann Arbor had a job in their communications area. I applied, and I was hired. I found myself sitting at the front desk, I was the greeter, and I took complaints. Among my tasks, I also was in charge of the employee newsletter. It was something that few people paid any attention to, which meant I could do whatever I wanted to do.

I decided it would be great to do a feature story that employees would be interested in. In Ann Arbor, they were getting a new mall. They had never had a major mall before, so that was big news. I picked up the phone, I called over to the mall management, and I said, I’m the editor for the City of Ann Arbor’s employee newsletter, and I’d like to get an exclusive. And they bought it, said yes. I did a feature story. It was very popular. It got the attention of my boss, and I was on my way.

What did those early roles teach you about leadership and storytelling?

With the other cities, I tried to treat the people working for me the way I wanted to be treated, provide the kind of opportunities I didn’t think I had, and be the kind of resource that I wished I had had coming along.

I’ve always been the kind of person that knows what I don’t know. When I was in Ann Arbor, I was reading the Michigan Chronicle one day. They were talking about a young man that was going to be presenting at the Public Relations Society of America in Detroit at their luncheon, and he was Black. I had never met a Black public relations professional. So I took a day off from work, and I drove to Detroit.

I listened to his presentation, and at the end of it, I went up to him and said, “I’m Georgella Muirhead, I’m in Ann Arbor, I’m interested in public relations, and do you mind if I reach out to you?” And he said yes. That really started changing my life, because I now had someone who I could call and ask questions. When people don’t look like you, you’re never sure if the questions you have are legitimate questions, or because you don’t know the code.

He was generous enough to give me that advice. He shaped the kind of professional I wanted to be. I decided right then and there I wanted to be a Jerry Lundy kind of practitioner. Someone who, if another practitioner reached out to me, and they just wanted a mentor, I wanted to be that person, because it meant so much to me.

You oversaw major civic moments from Pope John Paul II’s visit to the Pistons Championship celebrations. Which of these moments still stays with you?

I ended up working for Mayor Coleman Young. He was just an amazing boss, because you don’t get to work for a lot of people that are so confident in who they are that they don’t mind pushing you forward.

A lot of these projects I got to do, I thought I was just standing in the room listening, and then I would hear the cardinal asking the mayor, “who will lead this project for the Pope coming to visit?” And I heard my name. I’m like, oh, me? But he just provided so many wonderful opportunities. And when you have someone, sort of that wind beneath your back, you feel you can do anything, but you don’t want to let them down.

After your public sector success, you co-founded Berg Muirhead and Associates, now 98Forward. What inspired you to take that leap into entrepreneurship?

The mayor retired. I was getting to feel that my shelf life was about over in government. I wanted other challenges, and the mayor passed.

The person who had recruited me to come to the city of Detroit was the mayor’s press secretary. We had become very good friends. He had his own agency, a sort of one-person shop. I eventually did have my own agency, but we would often have to collaborate together, because when you’re only one person, you can’t do very big projects.

When the mayor passed, we thought it was our obligation to make sure that his funeral was done in absolutely the best way possible. It became a public event, a national story. So we came together to do that, and at the end of that crazy time period, I said, I think if we can get through this together without having an argument, we could probably run a business together. We started writing our business plan the next day and formed Berg Muirhead.

Bob and I both came out of government. He was a legendary press secretary, having worked for former Governor Milliken and then Mayor Young. He came from a media perspective. I love special events and campaigns and community engagement, so it was really a partnership that really worked. The firm thrived.

For people who do not know anything about 98Forward, can you tell us about it?

98Forward is a full-service public relations agency. The team that we put together are very good communicators. They love their job, they don’t take things for granted, they try to think out the box, and we always try to raise the standard.

When we take on a project, if it centers around people, we try to figure out how can you best get that message to them? Not necessarily just write a press release and send it out. Our agency is unique in that we have actually worked in every single Detroit neighborhood, multiple times.

A project that I’m really proud of is that the city of Detroit, for decades, had a very bad public lighting system. At one point, maybe only 40% of the street lights worked. So people have become very disillusioned. The city decided it would rebuild the entire public lighting platform. They asked if we would help communicate this message.

Bob and I listened, and the first thing we thought was, if we didn’t believe that you were actually going to put lights in every neighborhood in Detroit, the residents aren’t going to believe that. We talked to the engineers, and we said, rather than starting in the strongest neighborhoods, or downtown, why don’t we go to the most overlooked neighborhoods?

We convinced them to start putting street lights in a block that probably every other house was abandoned or had been torn down. No one would believe the aunties on this block had any influence with the mayor. We started the lighting project there. When their lights went on, and we told that story, people said, “well, wait a minute, if their lights are coming on, there’s hope for me.” The last neighborhood to be lit was downtown.

When we said all the blocks in the city of Detroit now had all new lights, people believed it, because they had seen it for themselves. I really see public relations as a problem solving tool. I truly believe with the right kind of engagement plan, you can make a difference.

What advice would you give the next generation of communicators?

I think it’s to be curious. The worst thing that a public relations practitioner can be is comfortable. When I get an assignment, even now, I’ll research. I would say, well, has someone done it better than the last time I did it? What I see is that practitioners now just want to send it in. They don’t want to do the hard work to see how they can improve it. That gives you just ordinary stuff.

One of the things that we try to really promote at our agency is you take the ordinary and make it extraordinary. If we’re going to do an event, how can this event be ahead of the last time someone did a building opening? How can we make it better? And to do that, you have to challenge yourself. You have to research things, you have to see what others are doing. You’ve got to do the hard work.

If you do the work, people will see, oh, this is someone I’ve got to hire. Really thinking about what you can do to make what you’re being asked to do better. How can you make it extraordinary? If you take that kind of mindset, then I guarantee you, people will see you. They will recognize your value, and opportunities will start being presented to you.

When you think about your legacy, what do you hope people remember the most about your contribution to Detroit?

That the Detroit communication landscape is so much more diverse than it was when I started, and inclusive. I just felt that no one should ever have to go through the extra steps that I went through just to figure out how they could fit into this career.

I was at a Public Relations Society of America meeting late last week. And as I looked around the room, I realized the landscape had changed. There were new practitioners that were still in school and excited about what roles they might play. There were experienced and seasoned practitioners that were doing outstanding work. They all look like me.

And I was so proud that the incoming president for us next year is a colleague from our agency, 98Forward. So it has definitely come full circle for me. I started understanding PR from PRSA, and I’m seeing a colleague go into leadership. If I had any role to play in changing that landscape, then it’s been worth the journey.

For people interested in reaching out to 98Forward, visit 98forward.com. The agency is headquartered in Midtown Detroit.