AIGA NY Board Presents
Boardie Life Lessons

Ana is a New York City-based designer + creative director. She has worked with companies like Afropunk, Droga5, Chase, Apple, Hennessy, the Africa Center, and the Poetry Foundation to champion, uplift, and amplify marginalized voices and stories.

Ana holds a Masters in Branding from the School of Visual Arts and is a graduate of Virginia State University, where she earned her BFA in Design, minor in Photography. To her, visual problem solving is such a welcomed challenge. Combining strategy, branding, and rising, she creates solutions that are thoughtful, inclusive, and inspiring. Since college, she has designed at Cassandra, a strategy agency studying young consumers, Afropunk, the music festival, Droga5, the advertising agency, and Apple. Outside of full time work, she’s passionate about building brands for minority and women-owned businesses, groups that are often overlooked and underrepresented.

Creative endeavors aside, Ana enjoys hosting friends, making cocktails, trying new restaurants, going to art museums, exploring the city, buying more books than she has time to read, and naps with her goldendoodle.

Katie is the founder of Hondo Creative, a dynamic creative studio that partners with clients and agencies to develop strategy-led design for environments, advertising, and branding. Her work has spanned rebrands for international companies; immersive experiences for award winning entertainment properties; and political campaigns for progressive candidates.

Previous to going out on her own, she cut her teeth at agencies like Pentagram and Huge. She holds a B.F.A. in Graphic Design from Rochester Institute of Technology and a M.F.A. in Design Criticism from The School of Visual Arts. She is also the co-author of Typography Referenced from Rockport Publishers and has taught design at RIT.

When not designing, you can usually find her photographing, illustrating, or down an internet rabbit hole of useless knowledge.

Heather-Mariah is an award-winning creative director whose work blends and bends disciplines from design to photography to poetry. She’s also a partner at Overeasy, a strategic design office founded in 2024. Prior to Overeasy, Heather-Mariah dedicated her twenties to building her eponymous practice, Studio HMVD (2018-2024), a boutique branding and photography agency. Her client work has spanned the gamut from indie darlings (Boy Smells, Disco, Berczy) to behemoths (M·A·C Cosmetics, Johnson & Johnson), and has been recognized by AIGA, The Brand Identity, Type Director’s Club, Communication Arts and more.

Heather-Mariah holds a BA in Design from Western Washington University, and has completed continuing education at SVA and Type @ Cooper. Outside of work, she studies and collects vintage designer clothing and catalogs vernacular typography.

Nika is a graphic designer, writer, and educator based in New York. She is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Communication Design at Parsons School of Design, and the director of the AAS program. Her research explores how design and identity overlap and highlights underreported voices in internet and design history. She has written stories ranging from the digitization of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet during the Yugoslav Wars to the impact AI has had on spirituality for publications including The New York Times, Eye on Design, and WIRED. She also runs Labud, a design studio specializing in strategy, branding, and web design for clients across fashion, art, and tech.

Ramy (he/him) is a Creative Director and founder of Madeo Studio, a strategic creative partner to nonprofits & socially-focused brands. Ramy leads a multidisciplinary team of strategists, designers, project managers, and engineers. He advises and works closely with clients on branding, websites, campaigns, and strategic communications. Some of these clients include the Equal Justice Initiative, the Innocence Project, STOP Tobacco, Define American, Echoing Green, MIT, Long Wharf Theatre, and Robin Hood Foundation. Madeo’s work has been recognized by the Webby Awards; winning and honored for Best Nonprofit Website on multiple occasions, and by the Shorty Awards among others.

Ramy is a member of the International Academy of Digital Arts, Sandbox, IxDA, AIGA, and previously the Communications Committee of the Seeds of Peace Board of Directors. He has been a judge himself on the Anthem Awards, the new gold standard for celebrating work and organizations making an impact. Ramy is a graduate of Bard College. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son and is originally from Cairo, Egypt.