Bios of national board members

Kim Baer is principal and founder of Los Angeles–based design studio KBDA. She developed an early interest in graphic design as a way to integrate three distinct passions: helping organizations find their voice, exploring the power of the written word, and celebrating the ways smart visual solutions can make people sit up and take notice.

Leveraging a variety of talents, KBDA’s projects span print, exhibition design, experience design and online applications. The firm’s client list ranges from consumer-oriented companies, such as Nike and Nissan, to nonprofit organizations such as the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. KBDA’s work is consistently honored by design and business organizations across the country and has been featured in numerous design compilations and publications, including Communication Arts, Print, Graphis, STEP and HOW.

In 2004, Baer was named an AIGA Fellow by AIGA Los Angeles, in honor of her service and achievement.

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Andrew Blauvelt is chief of communications and audience engagement and curator of architecture and design at the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis, where he oversees the design, new media, marketing/public relations and education departments. At the Walker he has organized many exhibitions, public programs, and community projects about the role and value of architecture and design in our lives, many in partnership with local AIGA and AIA chapters and community groups.

Blauvelt has been a professor at leading design programs in the United States and abroad such as Cranbrook Academy of Art, his alma mater, the Jan van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands, and at NC State University in Raleigh. He is a frequent lecturer at design conferences and schools around the world. Blauvelt’s work has received numerous design awards, including the National Design Award for Institutional and Corporate Achievement, and has been extensively published and exhibited in North America, Europe and Asia.

Blauvelt has written about design and culture for several publications including Eye, Emigre, Perspecta and Visible Language, and is a contributing writer for Design Observer.

Blauvelt has been a member of AIGA since 1998 and was elected to the Alliance Graphique Internationale in 2007.

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Ethan Bodnar is a product designer at Skillshare in New York City, a community marketplace to learn anything from anyone. He recently graduated from the Hartford Art School, University of Hartford with a BFA in Visual Communication Design. He is the author of Creative Grab Bag, published by HOW Books in 2009.

Bodnar served for three years as student groups director on the AIGA Connecticut board of directors, and spoke about design education at “Make/Think: AIGA Design Conference” with National Design Award recipient Charles Harrison. He was part of the AIGA BoNE [Best of New England] Show and has received three Worldstudio AIGA Scholarships.

He was a designer at Be Playful and a co-developer of Prototype, and has interned at co:lab and Behance. He believes in making a positive impact through design, and has participated in Design Global Change and
Project M. As an Eagle Scout, he values community and leadership.

Bodnar’s clients have included 826 National, TEDxBloomington, and the Do Lectures. He has been profiled on Felt & Wire, GOOD and Speak Up, and his work has been featured on Fast Company’s Co.Design, Pictory and swissmiss.

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Gaby Brink is the founder and executive creative director of Tomorrow, a creative agency that partners with clients to build the future of theirs brands and innovations. Brink leads a team of diverse talents to transcend tidy disciplines and create communication programs that turn heads and grab hearts everywhere that brands live. She works with a wide spectrum of top global marketers and emerging companies. And because she believes that design plays an important role in building a brighter future, she fervently applies her creative firepower to nurture environmental and social causes and help organizations with sustainability at their core to thrive.

Brink helps chart the organization’s long-term vision and promote the integration of sustainability strategies to design and business communities at large—she is the driving force behind the development of The Living Principles for Design, the first integrated sustainability framework for the creative industry. Her three-year tenure as lead producer of AIGA's interdisciplinary design conference, Compostmodern, was instrumental in turning that event into the preeminent destination for sustainability programming for designers of all stripes. Brink’s work has been celebrated globally and was most recently highlighted in the book Masters of Design: A Collection of the Most Inspiring Corporate Communications Designers in the World.

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Robert Calvano has been providing thought leadership and design solutions for more than 20 years. With a mind that never stops thinking about the creative process, he is always open to exploring new mediums and possibilities. Calvano is currently the director of Merck’s Global Creative Studios, a full-service in-house agency. The award-winning team’s portfolio includes environmental, interactive and print design, as well as video production, photography, illustration, webcasting, web development and finger painting if necessary.

Prior to joining Merck, Calvano was an interaction design director at R/GA and held various positions such as UX design director at Oxygen Media. In these roles he fine-tuned his talent for creating engaging brand experiences as well as intuitive and elegant interfaces that make complex information easier to understand and navigate.

Calvano has won numerous awards for his work in advertising and design and has recently been recognized internationally. He has been published in periodicals including Advertising Age, Graphic Design USA and HOW, as well as on AIGA.org.

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Allan Chochinov is a partner of Core77, a New York–based design network serving a global community of designers and design enthusiasts, and chair of the new MFA in Products of Design graduate program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Chochinov lectures around the world and at professional conferences and has been a guest critic at various design schools including Yale University, Carnegie Mellon and the Rhode Island School of Design. He has moderated and led workshops and symposia at the Aspen Design Conference, the Rockefeller Center at Bellagio, Compostmodern and Winterhouse, and is a frequent design competition juror.

Prior to Core77, his work in product design focused on the medical, surgical and diagnostic fields, as well as on consumer products and workplace systems. He has been named on numerous design and utility patents and has received awards from I.D., Communication Arts, the Art Directors Club and The One Club. He serves on the boards of the Designers Accord, Design Ignites Change and DesigNYC. He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at Pratt Institute since 1995, and graduate classes at the School of Visual Arts since 2007.

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Drew Davies is the founder and design director of Oxide Design Co., a communications and information design firm established in 2001.

A past president and advisory board member of the AIGA Nebraska chapter, Davies now serves as the design director for AIGA’s Design for Democracy program. DFD is currently involved in implementing nationwide ballot design standards for all elections.

Davies’s work has been awarded by every major national design competition, including One Show Design, the CLIO Awards, HOW, Print, AIGA:365 and Communication Arts. He also judged the Communication Arts Design Annual, an honor bestowed on only nine national designers each year. He is the only Nebraskan who has ever been selected as a judge in the 51 years of the competition.

Davies believes that the most effective method of creating positive change in the world is to clearly communicate the ideas that can make a difference: Clarity creates efficacy.

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Phil Hamlett has more than 23 years of experience in a wide variety of design and communications roles. Currently, he is ensconced as a design educator at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, the largest private art and design school in the country. Hamlett's students emerge from the MFA program as advanced design practitioners and go on to acquire positions at the highest levels of the profession.

Prior to the Academy, Hamlett was communications director at Turner & Associates in San Francisco, and in a previous life, a principal and director of creative services for EAI/Atlanta. Regardless of where he is found, Hamlett is adept at identifying creative challenges, distilling core objectives and then facilitating the development of the creative teams, key messages, conceptual frameworks and communications vehicles best suited to address those challenges. As the founder of Compostmodern and a co-author of The Living Principles for Design, he sets the agenda for sustainable business practices within the design community at large.

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Deanna Kuhlmann-Leavitt began her design career in Los Angeles 21 years ago, after completing a degree in graphic design at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. She worked for Santa Monica-based Morava and Oliver Design Office and Douglas Oliver Design Office before forming Oliver Kuhlmann with her longtime mentor Doug Oliver. In 2001, she established Kuhlmann Leavitt, Inc., a St. Louis-based, multi-faceted firm known for its work in print, new media and design for the built environment.

As principal of KLI, Kuhlmann-Leavitt has been recognized by AIGA, American Institute of Architects (AIA), New York Type Directors Club, Art Directors Clubs from New York to Los Angeles and AR100, including a Best of Show Award and the Mead Annual Report Show. Her studio's work has been featured in Communication Arts, Monsa books, International Trade Fair Design by Avedition and many other leading design publications. Design organizations across the United States and Canada have invited Kuhlmann-Leavitt to address their membership and to serve on juries for numerous regional and national competitions.

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Su Mathews has 20 years of experience in the creation and development of branding, identity systems, publications, interactive media, annual reports, way-finding and promotion projects for global organizations. As a senior partner at Lippincott, Mathews has led the creation of a unique select service brand for Hyatt called Hyatt Place. This branding initiative included positioning, naming, logo design and a sensory identity system with a signature scent and soundtrack.

Mathews has also helped lead the development and launch of Walmart’s brand revitalization, a massive repositioning that contemporized the brand while retaining the values of its legacy and heritage. Her clients have included the Art Institute of Chicago, Chick-fil-A, Disney, JPMorgan, Liz Claiborne, New York Public Library and Random House. Prior to joining Lippincott, Mathews was an associate partner at Pentagram Design.

She has previously taught a senior semester graphic design course at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and for the past two years she has co-chaired “Bright Lights: The AIGA Awards.”

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Doug Powell is a designer, entrepreneur and strategist. Together with his wife, Lisa Powell, he founded the Minneapolis-based Schwartz Powell Design in 1989. In 2004, following their daughter Maya’s diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes, the couple launched Type1Tools to bring well-designed, kid-friendly tools to the daily experience of managing this complex disease. Type 1 Tools was a recipient of an INDEX Design to Improve Life award in 2006. The success of Type1Tools led to the expansion of the business into HealthSimple, with a vision to help the millions of ?people living with chronic health problems. In 2007 HealthSimple was acquired by a division of Johnson & Johnson. Powell served as consulting creative director for HealthSimple through 2009, working closely with the Johnson & Johnson Global Strategic Design Office.

Currently Doug Powell helps a variety of partners in health and nutrition use design to advance their cause. Additionally, he organizes collaborative teams to develop and pursue self-initiated startup concepts.

Powell is a past member and treasurer of the national board of AIGA and a past chapter president of AIGA Minnesota. On his blog, Merge, Powell discusses new ways designers are working.

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Darralyn Rieth is a highly creative and resourceful design management professional with a successful 20-plus-year track record in large corporate settings and design consulting firms. She is well known for her role as director of global design at Campbell Soup Company, where she led the creative center of excellence for branding and packaging. Rieth also chaired the Women of Campbell Network, supporting women’s advancement to positions of influence and leadership. Her role in this area helped secure the prestigious Catalyst Award for Campbell in 2010.

In October of 2010, Rieth opened her own design-consulting firm, Pixi Dust Design, and now provides design-leadership, brand-strategy and design-operations expertise to companies looking to leverage the power of design to grow business and drive profits.

Rieth also consults regularly for Kimberly-Clark Corporation as design operations lead and supports the innovation website InnovationExcellence.com as creative director, making innovation resources, answers and best practices accessible for the greater good.

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Susana Rodríguez de Tembleque is the executive creative director of SYPartners, a firm that helps companies design their future.

SYPartners uses the fusion of systems thinking and creativity to inspire their clients to go through the transformation that will lead them to greatness. Rodríguez de Tembleque is responsible for pushing the originality and creativity of SYPartners’ teams and work. She sets the overall creative vision for the firm and leads her team of multidisciplinary designers to conceptualize and then bring to life the rare, transformative strategies, stories and ideas—be it through print or digital experiences, environments, products, films and more. Rodríguez de Tembleque also plays an active role in the work itself—helping the Gap brand reimagine its store environment and customer experience, assisting GE with cultivating a culture of innovation, and most recently working with IBM to design a series of exhibitions, films and printed pieces illuminating and explaining the idea of progress.

Prior to joining SYPartners, Rodríguez de Tembleque was a creative director of Wired and a design director at VSA Partners. She is an active voice in the design industry, a recipient of every major design award and has been recognized by STEP as one of the “Ten Women to Watch.”

Growing up in Spain in a family of bankers with a secret penchant for the arts, Rodríguez de Tembleque quickly developed a passion for design and its power to move people, solve problems and express what words can’t. Today, she remains passionate about the role design and powerful storytelling can play in challenging the status quo of business and society as a whole.

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Nathan Shedroff is the chair of the groundbreaking MBA in Design Strategy at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco. This program prepares the next generation of innovation leaders for a world that is profitable, sustainable, ethical and truly meaningful. The program unites the perspectives of systems thinking, design and integrative thinking, sustainability and generative leadership into a holistic strategic framework. Students learn to create innovative products, services and policy, as well as new business models.

Shedroff is a pioneer in experience design, interaction design and information design, speaks and teaches internationally, and is a serial entrepreneur. His many books include Experience Design 1.1, Making Meaning, Design Is the Problem and the upcoming Make It So.

Shedroff holds an MBA in sustainable management from Presidio Graduate School and a BS in industrial design from the Art Center College of Design. He worked with Richard Saul Wurman at The Understanding Business and, later, co-founded vivid studios, a decade-old pioneering company in interactive media and one of the first web services firms on the planet. Vivid’s hallmark was helping to establish and validate the field of information architecture, by training an entire generation of designers in the newly emerging web industry.

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Robin Tooms is the principal, managing director and brand/web strategist for Savage in Houston. Tooms works closely with clients to develop brand positioning, core messaging, marketing strategies and brand identities. She is dedicated to staying at the forefront of innovative technologies that enhance communication and business. In her role as managing director, Tooms is responsible for keeping internal operations at Savage running smoothly, especially in areas regarding human resources-managing, recruiting, training, mentoring and professional development for its talented employees. Tooms has been with Savage for more than a decade working with clients such as Baker Hughes, Devon Energy, General Motors, Imperial Sugar, Tenaris and Weingarten Realty. Tooms is an alumna of the University of Houston and holds an MBA from the Rice University Jones Graduate School.

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