AIGA DFW Members and Friends,

After many years of serving our robust local design community, I am excited to share with you a new direction that we’ve planned for a strong new future, with continued growth for our chapter and reimagined opportunities for creative professionals in DFW.

But before jumping ahead, I need to extend deep gratitude to those whose tireless dedication kept AIGA DFW kicking during rough times. Through pandemic confusion and the several arduous years of restructuring that followed, a skeleton crew kept our chapter running smoothly, wearing a silly number of hats at any given time to keep our programs alive. Secretary, Mentor Event Chair, Director of Membership, Chair of The Deck, and Copy Editor? Check ✔️. It’s hard to express how much appreciation I have for the determined and loyal leaders who’ve brought us here (but the next time you see Linda Joseph or Brett Yanoski, do offer a handshake and a well-deserved ‘thank you’). To our unwavering members, generous partners, and community friends, thank you greatly for the continued support.

We’ve made it, we’re stronger for it, and man are we ever excited to move on! We have regrown our team, revamped our events calendar, and reslated the AIGA DFW Board of Directors. It is my privilege to introduce you to our 2024-2026 Board Slate:

Rosilyn Rayborn | Slated for President
Rosilyn is the Vice President of Strategy & Design for Citi. She has held past positions as Creative Director at BrandCory and as the Vice President of Brand & Creative Services at Associa. After volunteering with AIGA DFW as a mentor for several years, both before and through the pandemic, her robust leadership history and contagiously bright-yet-direct personality have made her an inimitable candidate for our chapter’s next President.

Linda Varghese Joseph | Slated for Vice President of Operations
Linda is a Creative Director for Corgan, and previously worked in the Digital Design Department at Fossil for fifteen years. She began volunteering with AIGA DFW in 2017, and served as our Director of Diversity & Inclusion for four years, running many events and diversity in design content campaigns, before accepting a position on our Executive Board of Directors as Secretary in 2022. Linda has chaired over a dozen events and was the Jackie of all trades on our team through the funky pandemic fallout. She has emerged safely on the other side with unrivaled deftness, and I cannot imagine a more qualified candidate to serve as the VP of Ops.

Crissanka Christadoss | Slated for Director of Partnerships & Treasury
Beyond her work as a Client Manager for Pulse, Crissanka has a long history of service leadership for nonprofit organizations, with particular experience in partnerships, grant writing, and other financial matters. While her personal background is not in design, she loves supporting the creative community. We learned that Crissanka also wields expertise in both marketing and program / event management, and we knew she belonged with us. We’re enthused by this opportunity to channel her energy and ingenuity into our partnerships.

Ana Ponce | Slated for Director of Community
For several years, Ana has served as a member of our comms team: designing art, crafting motion graphics, and revamping our social media presence. During college, she served on the AIGA UTA Student Group Board, completing a year as the organization’s President after serving a term as the group’s Director of Membership. There’s so much AIGA love, community spirit, and creative vision alive in Ana. We couldn’t be more excited to unleash her passion for growing an environment of creative camaraderie as our Director of Community.

Jenna Bradford | Slated for Director of Communications
Since joining the AIGA DFW team to serve as Marketing Chair last year, Jenna has impressed us with copy writing, wowed us with innovative communications ideas, and given our creative protocols a proper facelift. She is the Director of User Experience for Falkon Technologies, and her work for our organization has consistently featured an unflinching can-do attitude and striking eye for detail. Jenna’s professional experience, clever ideas, and penchant for iterating make her a shoe-in to join our Board as the next Director of Communications.

If you are a member of our chapter, kindly give one more minute of your time to vote online. Vote to show your support for the new team. Vote because you’re excited for a brighter future. Vote to help me retire from the presidency! Vote just to show us that you read this far, or vote to let us know that you don’t support this slate (and then use the comment field to share why, so that your voice can be heard). Vote because we legally need our members to ratify our new board slate so that we can begin an amazing next phase for you, for us, and for the community.

Pending member approval, our new board slate will begin working immediately with our dedicated team of stellar program chairs, including:

• Ayumi Anderson, The Deck Chair
• Todd Lilly, Student Groups Chair
• Pamela Shelby, Student Groups Chair
• Claudia De La Garza, Onsite Experience Chair
• Jeremy Johnson, UX Events Chair
• Miranda Mabery, Professional Development Chair

And then, with the blessing of our members, Brett Yanoski and I will step away from the Executive Team and onto the Advisory Board with Gus Granger, Dawn Davidson, Willie Baronet, and Holly Aguilar.

With appreciation,

Loryn O’Donnell
President
AIGA DFW