Ethics Certified Spotlight: Laura Small

Institute for Advertising Ethics • June 18, 2025

Meet Laura! A member of our Ethics Certified community and IAE Advisory Council.

Laura is the Executive Vice President of Human Resources at RPA. Alongside her work at RPA, she is part of the IAE Advisory Council!


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

I am passionate about ethics in advertising. The content that the IAE presents and supports is critical for the future of our industry.



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

I am a firm believer in providing transparent and honest information to consumers and candidates regarding agencies and our clients. For me, one example is the posting of our agency diversity percentages on our website. It's important to me that candidates, prospective clients, and the general community understand that this is an area of focus for us, even though we have not yet reached our goals.

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

I am a firm believer in providing transparent and honest information to consumers and candidates regarding agencies and our clients. For me, one example is the posting of our agency diversity percentages on our website. It's important to me that candidates, prospective clients, and the general community understand that this is an area of focus for us, even though we have not yet reached our goals.

Principle 1.

Advertising, public relations, marketing communications, news, and editorial all share a common objective of truth and high ethical standards in serving the public.


Why is ethics important for advertising?

For advertising to be meaningful and relevant, it must be trustworthy and ethical. Organizations need to offer their products in a way that accurately and truthfully represents their value and benefits. As Simon Sinek says, "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." So agencies and their advertisers have an obligation to provide consumers with the truth behind products, their potential benefits, and other information related to their use and value.


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

Consumers are becoming more savvy and now look to influencers and friends for product recommendations. Agencies can help advertisers regain the trust of their customers by being candid and open about their products and by listening to their consumers.


Can you share a time when you encountered an ethical dilemma? What were the business outcomes?

I have encountered many ethical dilemmas in my professional career—I sometimes refer to them as "inconvenient truths." Whether it is being honest with a candidate about why they were not selected for a position, or having a hard conversation about a client scope and the cost of their work, we can never go wrong when we tell the truth and behave ethically.


If you play the long game you will always do the right thing by doing what's right. I know that sounds cheesy but it's true!

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Bulletin #9: Momentum Grows: Leaders Unite to Build Trust in Advertising

By Logan Chrisinske • November 20, 2025
Building Trust at Every Touchpoint The Institute for Advertising Ethics is gaining momentum, propelled by the success of our October Global Ethics Day in New York. Across participants and panelists alike, IAE’s Ethics Day affirmed a growing consensus that trust is now becoming operational, measurable, teachable, and scalable throughout the advertising and media ecosystem. Global Ethics Day 2025: Building Trust at Every Touchpoint The Liberty Room at Frankfurt Kurnit was filled on October 15 as leaders from industry, government, civil society and academia united for IAE Ethics Day 2025. Delegates from the U.S. Government, ANA Ethics Center, Microsoft, Kenvue, Uber, LinkedIn, Google LLC, Yahoo Inc., Accenture, Dentsu, Paul Weiss, Mastercard, and many others came together around a single, urgent theme: advancing the creation of scalable ethics standards to restore trust across the $1.5 trillion advertising and media industry, especially amid the rise of AI. The work is well underway, led by leaders shaping an open, validated, multi-stakeholder standard, one that delivers transparency, interoperability, verifiability, and broad adoption. Highlights included: “The future of advertising depends not only on innovation but on trust. Ethics shouldn't be understood as a constraint on innovation, rather as a catalyst for it." -Dr. Juan Mundel, Editor, Journal of Advertising Education. Dr. Juan Mundel speaks about rebuilding trust in Advertisin g “We need to create a culture where people can ask questions and where we prioritize ethics.” -Dr. Anna McAlister, Director of Curriculum and Assessment, IAE Experts highlight the role of ethics education and self-regulation in the Advertising Industry “Trust is the new currency in our industry. Without it, even the most creative campaigns can’t sustain real impact.” -Ty Heath, Director and co-founder of the B2B Institute, LinkedIn Fireside Trust Performance and Ethics in Action “People tend to believe computers are smarter than we are, which makes us less likely to question their output.” -Dr. Dana LaFon, U.S. Government Panel Explores Global Ethical Frameworks Guiding AI and Advertising “AI knows, but AI doesn’t think and AI doesn’t feel. That’s a line that’s helpful for me.” -Esther Uhalte Cisneros, Head of eCommerce & Retail Sales, Germany, Google Experts Debate “Where to Draw the Line” in Advertising Ethics, AI and Authenticity “Legal is [...] the floor and ethics is the ceiling. Even if something is legally correct, it may not be ethically right to do.” -Peri Fluger, General Counsel, Ruder Finn Building a Culture of Compliance: From Policy to Practice

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.