You hear it everywhere—at conferences and crossroads, on bar stools and Zoom calls, in Lyfts and Slack—the lighting industry, in all its facets, doesn’t advocate well. We’ve spent a lot of energy trying to find identity within the whole—maybe without realizing it, we’ve fractured some of our credibility and productivity along the way. We’ve also fallen into assuming personal business strategies or methods of individual influence are effective when scaled to an entire community.
Yet, the industry wants a plan for resiliency; one that champions quality lighting design, meaningful and adopted standards, and diversity that is recognized and valued. We say we want education at every level, for everyone, on every topic...but the implied, and sometimes outright demand, is: more information, faster, and free, preferably in bite-size chunks, no long reading assignments, and with a certificate attached.
“We are fragmented in ways that make advocacy difficult—resources are split, strategic goals are often self-sustaining...and staff shortages further weaken collective influence.”
We hear a lot (weekly, at times) that IES standards (a form of education) should be free, but the investment to publish, support in fees, market, etc., is an annual investment (just at the IES, not including other standards developers) of well over $500,000. The biggest shift in our industry isn’t about technology anymore, it’s in the approach to learning: we demand more but invest less.
Downsized organizations like IALD and the IES, emptied offices, disappearing staff…these aren’t just growing pains. They’re warning signs. They show us what happens when advocacy is treated as optional: survival mode takes over, and long-term vision fades.
An article in designing lighting1 featured thoughts from respected lighting designer and IES Past President Paul Mercier, who said, “We have to begin acting as a large community, not a collection of small special interest groups, so that we can work together to create a stronger lighting industry. As a community, we can approach challenges with more hands and a greater ability to make progress. Then, our legitimacy can rise to that enjoyed by architects, interior designers, and engineers.”
Mercier’s observation is uncannily timed with my reading of Community: The Structure of Belonging2 by Peter Block, who writes, “The essential challenge is to transform the isolation and self-interest within our communities into connectedness and caring for the whole. The key is to identify how this transformation occurs. We begin by shifting our attention from the problems of community to the possibility of community…A key insight in this pursuit is to accept the importance of social capital to the life of the community. This begins the effort to create a future distinct from the past.”
Diving into lighting organizations, the following list of those with influence and/or origins (primarily in North America) represents specific values, services, and needs.
American Lighting Association (ALA)
American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE)
Asian Lighting Community (ALC)
Association of Outdoor Lighting Professionals (AOLP)
Black United in Lighting and Design (BUILD)
Business of Light (BOL)
DarkSky International (DSI)
Equity in Lighting
Illuminating Engineering Society (IES)
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
International Association of Lighting Designers (IALD)
International Association of Lighting Management Companies (NALMCO)
International Commission on Illumination (CIE)
International Landscape Lighting Institute (ILLI)
International Ultraviolet Association (IUVA)
Lighting Controls Association (LCA)
National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED)
National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors (NAILD)
National Electrical Manufacturers Representatives (NEMRA) Lighting Division
National Electrical Manufacturers’ Association (NEMA)
National Lighting Bureau (NLB)
North American Coalition of Lighting Industry Queers (NACLIQ)
Women in Lighting
Women in Lighting and Design (WILD).
This list isn’t exhaustive, but it’s clear: we are diverse, technical, valuable, and crave representation. Many of you may invest in being a member of five or six of the aforementioned organizations. There’s another clear, uncomfortable truth: we are fragmented in ways that make advocacy difficult—resources are split, strategic goals are often self-sustaining rather than industry-focused, and staff shortages further weaken collective influence.
If we’re going to build something stronger, I suspect we should start with shared truths. I believe those 20+ listed groups would agree—at least in part—on the following:
Lighting is vital to people and to the realization of design ideas.
Lighting varies in quality and cost, and understanding those differences is valuable.
Lighting professionals deserve recognition for their expertise as well as fair pay.
Lighting can be productive, and it can be a nuisance.
Lighting depends on other disciplines to be impactful.
These truths provide a foundation for effective advocacy. But a foundation alone isn’t enough. Without a clear path of responsibility (and accountability) and concrete goals, we will continue to fall short. If a single group could have successfully led this effort alone, we’d likely have already achieved what Mercier describes: legitimacy equal to architects, interior designers, and engineers. Though if those folks we admire sought out the lighting industry (ahem, googled), which on this list of organizations would come up first? What would their impression be? Would it be respect? Concern? Confusion?
Looking at advocacy frameworks, one feels particularly compelling for our industry: “The Advocacy Strategy Framework”3 developed by Julia Coffman and Tanya Beer. Their model organizes advocacy around two key dimensions: “audience,” such as the public, influencers, decisionmakers; and “stages of change,” such as awareness, will, and action (Figure 1).
This framework offers a structured way to move beyond merely identifying problems (as Block warns against) and into actionable possibilities for our industry. Coffman and Beer outline key strategic questions and measurable outcomes for each strategy:
How is the strategy positioned?
Who specifically is the strategy trying to influence, and how?
What are the underlying assumptions about how change happens?
Who else is working on this, and how?
How will the strategy evolve over several years?
What interim outcomes indicate progress?
The fourth question is especially relevant given our industry’s fragmentation as we evolve beyond being problem-focused. As Coffman and Beer note, “Advocacy often features multiple voices working on the same issue—aligned or in opposition…Mapping multiple advocacy strategies onto the same framework helps identify where different organizations are positioned, how they add value, and potential points of conflict or synergy.”
The deeper-dive in just this one area encourages critical questions such as:
How are advocates complementing one another?
Is there unnecessary duplication of effort?
Are strategies unintentionally working in opposition?
What does the opposition’s positioning indicate about how advocates should respond?
While “The Advocacy Strategy Framework” is one of many approaches, it highlights an important reality: advocacy is not just about representation and education—it’s about purpose. Even if all 20+ lighting organizations never fully align—and I am not suggesting they should—some could clarify their roles within a broader strategy. Instead of just representing their members, they could actively contribute to industry-wide progress. Some may find their strongest positioning in a specific quadrant of the framework. Others might tighten their mission, focusing on their role in driving change, rather than preserving (or fixing) the past.
Maybe small steps are possible: for every sponsorship asked for, can a group outside of lighting be identified for outreach as a condition of support? For every event, could inviting a non-lighting guest be incentivized? What if an honorarium for a talk was increased if a representative from an adjacent discipline (landscape architecture, interior design, etc.) was a co-presenter (think finder’s fee)?
If Block is right, then the lighting industry must recognize its greatest strength isn’t in individual efforts, but in its collective social capital. At the IES, we have made meaningful progress lately by way of an outreach pipeline, measurable engagement with non-lighting organizations, and have additional plans. But there’s a long road ahead, and much of it depends on education and investment.
Shirley Coyle, “Up Close with Paul Mercier,” designing lighting, vol. 5, no. 4, Feb./Mar. 2025.
Peter Block, Community: The Structure of Belonging, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009.
Julia Coffman and Tanya Beer, “The Advocacy Strategy Framework,” Center for Evaluation Innovation, Mar. 2015. Available: https://evaluationinnovation.org/publication/the-advocacy-strategy-framework-3/
Brienne Willcock is director of Education and Standards for the IES.
