
Integrity Alone Will Get You Outplayed
From Designing Tomorrow: Creative Strategies for Social Impact by Eric Ressler
May 19, 2026 · 45 min · Episode 89
About this episode
Joelle Lester discusses the challenges of maintaining integrity in the social impact sector against powerful industries that manipulate public perception.
There's an unspoken rule in the social impact sector: we tell the truth, we follow the science, we play fair. But those rules are increasingly a losing strategy, because the industries we're up against don't have to win the argument. They just have to muddy it. Joelle Lester, Executive Director of the Public Health Law Center, has spent 25 years studying how Big Tobacco manufactured doubt, and how that same playbook now drives opposition to progress on climate, food, and public health. Episod...
People in this episode
Host: Eric Ressler
Guest: Joelle Lester
Topics covered
- social impact
- public health
- climate change
- food policy
- tobacco industry
- truth in advocacy
Keywords
- social impact
- public health
- Big Tobacco
- climate change
- food policy
- advocacy
- truth
- science
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Public Health Law Center, Big Tobacco
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