Your new 2006–07 Board of Directors braved the downtown LA heat last Saturday, July 12 for the annual AIGA/LA Board Retreat, held at the offices of our new chapter secretary/treasurer, Errol Gerson. This day-long gathering, fresh on the heels of the national Leadership Retreat, was an opportunity for your representatives to strategize for the coming year--planning programming, reviewing successes and failures, analyzing budgets, and basically trying to figure out how to make the chapter the best that it can be for the LA design community.

The national Retreat was a revelation, to me at least. It was the first time I understood the breadth of national initiatives underway, how vitally relevant our association has become, and how effectively we are executing against the AIGA mission. I urge you to visit the national site for an update.

At our LA Board Retreat, we discussed our key goal: how to build upon these initiatives and keep our actions just as relevant. An enormous amount of effort happens behind the scenes to make this happen, and this workathon was no exception. New chapter president Agustin Garza has called on all board members to develop systems and procedures for greater efficiency. Each committee presented its fine-tuned architecture and outlined its plans for success. Development VP Scott Meisse and new co-VP Robert Barrett detailed a truly inspired promotions/event plan cooked up with our programming wizards, Nida Sanger, Cynthia Murnane and new co-VP Bonnie Powers. In short, each of the 16 attendees did their homework, and brought a lot of passion and excitement to the table. It’s looking like a very exciting year to be an AIGA/LA member.

Please join us and get involved. You can volunteer for any committee by going to the Chapter page of this site and emailing its VPs (the committees are listed on the far left).

Justin Carroll
Vice President