Lissy Friedman holds a J.D. cum laude from Suffolk University Law School in Boston, MA and a BA in Political Science magna cum laude from Boston University in Boston, MA. She has spent almost two decades studying the tobacco industry’s corporate malfeasance and its impact on the law and tobacco control policy.

Her areas of expertise include the tobacco industry’s use of corporate social responsibility rhetoric and tactics, as well as personal responsibility messaging, to improve its image. In her research, she has extensively analyzed the tobacco industry’s internal corporate documents, and is intimately familiar with Big Tobacco’s playbooks for both its legal and public relations strategies. 

In addition to analyzing the tobacco industry, other areas of focus have been industries that sell products which cause avoidable non-communicable disease and death and that have adopted Big Tobacco’s playbook, including purveyors of obesogenic food and beverages, alcohol, electronic gambling machines and daily fantasy sports online gambling. 

Ms. Friedman is a frequent presenter at national tobacco control and public health conferences. She also recently filed an amicus brief with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court advocating for the approval of a ballot question that would outlaw casino gambling in the state, and submitted a legal memo to the MA Attorney General arguing that daily fantasy sports are illegal under current MA law.