The Fabric of our Society

The Fabric of Our Society column invites industry leaders to provide experience-based opinions and discussions on various topics. Diverse perspectives are respected and most welcome, but do not necessarily reflect the opinions of IESNYC or the Board of Managers. Want to contribute? Email [email protected]

March 2026

The Work That Changes Us   

Cy Eaton
Associate Director, HLB Lighting Design
Managing Director, Light for LA initiative

In the weeks following the Los Angeles fires of January 2025, I spent a great deal of time with my neighbor Eddie.

Eddie is 84. He had lived in his house 60 years. The routines of his life were etched into deep, familiar, efficient ruts. When the fire took our homes, it didn’t just erase the structures. It scorched the invisible order that made our lives navigable. We were faced with thousands of unfamiliar, urgent decisions, without the support of our daily framework.

What Eddie needed most at first was not advice, not reassurance. It was something modest and practical: a notebook. Someplace to write things down and command order from a blur of uncertainty. The cornerstone for the foundation to build a new life, a new reality.

At the time, I assumed I was helping Eddie regain his footing. Only later did I recognize that the act of showing up – listening carefully, resisting the impulse to solve – was quietly reorganizing my own reality. The work was not heroic. It was attentive.

I’ve come to see that this is not incidental. Participation – especially in situations that are not structured around authority, contracts, or immediate outcomes – has a way of reshaping professional judgment. It changes how you listen, what you notice, and how comfortable you become with uncertainty. The effects are rarely immediate or measurable, but they accumulate.

It’s not direct deposit

The term social capital is often used to describe what grows out of this kind of sustained engagement. It may sound transactional, even cynical. But in its simplest form it refers to trust. It develops with familiarity, confidence built though shared effort and uncertainty. Social capital often resists pursuit. You don’t build social capital directly: it emerges over time as a byproduct of attentive participation.

In lighting, most of us spend our days inside our narrow lanes of responsibility. Scopes are defined, teams are familiar, outcomes are measured. This focus is both necessary and limiting. But over time, it cloisters us – insulating us from broader questions about how our work fits into a professional culture that depends on collaboration, shared standards, and trust nurtured across roles and disciplines.

Industry participation

Industry participation creates a different kind of space. Whether volunteering on events, committees, conferences, mentorship, or technical standards, these environments operate by different rules. You work alongside peers who don’t report to you. Authority is often ad hoc and fuzzy. Progress depends less on expertise and more on listening, adaption, and persistent engagement.

I’ve been involved in lighting-related volunteer efforts for years. What has stayed with me is not any single accomplishment or lesson learned: it’s the cumulative effect of showing up over time. Working through imperfect processes. Navigating disagreement without the clarity of a client brief or the safety net of a contract.

Above Photo by Glen Keune, courtesy Illuminating Engineering Society

The most important work

Recently, I volunteered two years as IES Annual Conference Chair. This formidable role demands coordination, judgment, and a steady tolerance for complexity. Chairs start as volunteers and advisors, moving up over the course of 5 years or so. So success belongs to the whole, not the individual. And when the time comes to step aside, the most important work is the handoff.

That role has now passed to another. She will now give of her gifts, exercise her judgment, and derive her own understanding from the experience. Watching that transition unfold has reinforced something I’ve learned: leadership is always provisional. Its value lies not in a project outcome or holding a position, but in creating conditions for others to grow.

Such experiences demand something unique. They expose our habits and test assumptions about how consensus forms and how progress is made. They require you to lead without relying on power, money, or authority. You must contribute without needing to be right.

Found in translation

Gradually, this has changed how I show up elsewhere. I listen more carefully. I have become more aware of context. And I see many problems as realities not to be solved so much as navigated over time. What strikes me most is how slow and incremental this change has been. Again, it’s a steady accumulation of small recalibrations, reinforced through repetition.

My latest volunteer undertaking, as Managing Director of the Light for LA initiative, draws on these decades of attentive engagement. We’re working to improve the lighting outcomes in the massive rebuilding effort underway.  My role isn’t to declare and deliver a solution, but to listen to the needs of communities and research the resources offered by volunteers. Together we can identify a feasible path for these coalitions to achieve meaningful impact.

Eddie fits right into that model. My service to him wasn’t a revelation so much as a reminder. The contributions that mattered most in the moment were the same ones I had been practicing, in different forms, for years: attention, patience, and the willingness to sit with uncertainty.

Lighting, as a profession, depends on these qualities far more than we often acknowledge. Our work sits at the intersection of technology, regulation, design, and human experience. It requires trust and a shared vocabulary. It requires people who are willing to collaborate beyond the narrow scope of our immediate responsibilities.

Volunteerism is a major determinant of lighting industry culture. Not because of the outcomes, as much as the way it builds camaraderie and changes the individuals who take part. Over time, it sharpens our judgment, builds confidence in ambiguity, and creates relationships grounded in familiarity and trust.

Attentive dividends

There are lots of ways to participate. Some are out-front, visible. Most are not. Some involve leadership; others involve little more than being present and engaged and sharing your thoughts when asked. Whatever form of volunteering you take on, you are showing up in spaces where wins and progress are incremental, unsung, but significant and deeply rewarding.

Social capital is never the goal. It arrives as a byproduct of attentive service. Of showing up and caring. Participation has shaped my awareness of my industry, my community, and myself.

A year ago I was homeless, standing in the drugstore aisle looking for a notebook for my neighbor, Eddie, when it struck me – to navigate the uncertainty ahead, I would need a notebook, too.

Be attentive. Engage. Find small ways to help. Over time, small investments of grace will yield surprising dividends for your community. And you just might help yourself along the way.