Ethics Certified Spotlight: Anna R. McAlister

Institute for Advertising Ethics • May 5, 2025

Meet Anna! A member of our Ethics Certified community, Director of Curriculum & Assessment, and Board of Directors.

Anna is a Professor of Marketing at Endicott College. She teaches Consumer Behavior, Senior Thesis, and Business Analysis & Research and is actively involved with Endicott's Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA) organization. She is also the Director of Curriculum & Assessment and part of the Board of Directors for the IAE!


How has IAE's certifications impacted you, your career, and your approach to ethical advertising?

IAE certifications have been a wonderful addition to my teaching. Students in my Consumer Behavior class are required to complete Green Shield. I also recommended the CEAS course for our freshman Marketing course. I believe all marketing students can benefit from learning about the importance of ethics earlier in their academic careers. 



What Ethical Advertising Principles and Practices do you actively apply in your work and how?

IAE Principle 8 is a really important principle. I think it is essential for employees in any field to feel comfortable raising the discussions about ethics without fear or any negative repercussions.


Principle 8.

Advertisers and their agencies, and online and offline media, should discuss privately potential ethical concerns, and members of the team creating ads should be given permission to express internally their ethical concerns.


Why is ethics important for advertising?

Ethics is important because trust is pivotal to good consumer-brand relationships. Companies need to be honest about the goods and services they provide. Consumers deserve to feel confident in their decision making and also confident that they will be respected in terms of their rights (to privacy, fair play, etc). 


What are some of the biggest ethical challenges you see in advertising today and how do you think these challenges can be overcome?

Data privacy is a huge issue. Everyday consumers don't really understand how their data are being used (sometimes used against them). The issue of data privacy can be overcome by (a) leveling the playing field (i.e., educating consumers on the value of their data and how their data may be used to manipulate them) and (b) providing opt-out options wherever possible. 


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Building a Culture of Compliance: From Policy to Practice

By Logan Chrisinske • November 3, 2025
At the Global Ethics Day session hosted by the Institute for Advertising Ethics, legal and communications leaders from Uber, LinkedIn and Ruder Finn joined attorney Jeffrey Greenbaum of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz to discuss how companies can translate ethical principles into practice. Greenbaum opened by noting that ethical advertising often goes beyond legal compliance. “Even if you communicate truthful information to consumers, but you communicate it in a way that’s misleading, that in and of itself can be false advertising,” he said. Jess Smith, associate general counsel at Uber, said ethics should be embedded in company culture, not just policy. “It’s not just who the brand is — it’s what actions they take out in the world,” she said.

Panel Explores Global Ethical Frameworks Guiding AI and Advertising

By Logan Chrisinske • October 31, 2025
At the Global Ethics Day session hosted by the Institute for Advertising Ethics, panelists explored how ethical frameworks—Western and non-Western alike—shape the future of artificial intelligence and advertising. John C. Havens, a leading AI ethics expert and author, opened the discussion by contrasting Western “dualism” with indigenous and collective ethical traditions. “In the West, binary code—1 and 0—is based on dualism,” he said. “But traditions like Ubuntu ethics remind us, ‘I am because we are.’ When you take the best of Western thinking and apply what it means to be in community, you get the best of both worlds.” Alayna Kennedy, a data scientist and AI governance leader at MasterCard, emphasized the importance of turning abstract ethics into practical systems. “The real challenge is how to make fairness real—how to take a word on a page and turn it into a change in your product that impacts a real person,” she said. She added that MasterCard takes a “risk-based” approach to AI governance, focusing on identifying and mitigating potential harms while enabling innovation.

Experts Debate “Where to Draw the Line” in Advertising Ethics, AI and Authenticity

By Logan Chrisinske • October 31, 2025
At the Global Ethics Day conference, industry leaders and academics explored how artificial intelligence, advertising ethics and authenticity intersect — and where companies should draw the line between innovation and manipulation. Esther Uhalte Cisneros of Google moderated the discussion, joined by Jackie Hernández, CEO of New Majority Ready, and Juan Mundel, associate professor at Michigan State University. Mundel shared new research showing that brands pulling back from diversity, equity and inclusion efforts risk losing consumer trust. “We found that consumers actually feel a breach of ethicality, and that breach hurts purchase intentions — we’re seeing a 20% decline,” he said. “It’s a reminder that academia and industry need to talk more about the data behind these decisions.” Hernández emphasized that ethics in advertising must evolve alongside technology. “Where you’re materially misleading a consumer is where I would see the thinking and the feeling that need to guide brand decisions,” she said.