Upcoming Event
Tuesday, May 5 2026
6:30–9:00 pm
Business of Design
Accounts & Client Services
Tuesday, May 5 2026
6:30–9:00 pm
Business of Design
Accounts & Client Services
Part 2 Accounts & Client Services -The Relationship Layer
Every creative breakthrough has a relationship behind it. Account and client services leaders carry something that rarely gets named: the invisible labor of keeping clients confident, briefs honest, and teams protected. This session explores what it actually takes to build trust, navigate conflict, and make space for ambitious work — without burning yourself or the client down in the process.
Join, Stephanie Primus of Beardwood, Justine Allan of Pearlfisher, Josh Griffin of Design Bridge, and Ru Soylu of Koto in conversation with AIGA NY board member Mike Perry of Tavern.
Business of Design is a three part, intimate roundtable series spotlighting the people who make great creative work possible but rarely get the spotlight.
Design is often celebrated through craft and creative vision. But behind every successful studio, agency, or in-house team is a group of operators, strategists, and leaders quietly holding the system together. Client services managing trust and expectations. Strategists shaping clarity and direction. Operations, finance, and HR building the conditions for sustainable work.
This series reframes “business” not as the enemy of creativity, but as its infrastructure.
Each session brings together experienced practitioners in a specific discipline for an honest, peer level conversation about what actually happens behind the scenes. Shared lessons and an open Q&A exchange with the audience.
Capped at 50 attendees, the goal is intimacy, candor, and usefulness. This is not about inspiration quotes. It’s about how the work actually gets done.
Event Series: Fresh Dialogue
These events are critical discussions that focus on current events, issues of cultural relevance and emerging topics in the world of design.
Schedule
- 6:30 pm Doors open & Check-in
- 7:00 pm Event begins
- 8:30 pm Event ends
Tickets
- Non-Members $55.00
- AIGA Members $45.00
- AIGA Member - 3-part series $110.00
- Non-Member - 3-part series $135.00
Panel
Driving Manhattan’s Chinatown towards a future where tradition meets innovation, Welcome to Chinatown‘s mission is to bolster local businesses and entrepreneurs and forge connections within and across the community.
Justine Allan
Justine Allan, Managing Director, Pearlfisher NYC.
I help brands find their one thing. The thing that makes people pick you, push you, choose you.
Three decades of brand building, from an education at Central Saint Martins to Design Bridge, Moving Brands, Turner Duckworth, and now Pearlfisher. Working across Food to Pharma. Founders to Fortune 500s. Across all of that, I’ve learned that the best work comes from deep relationships.
I listen more than I talk. I translate what clients need, not just what they ask for. And I have a pretty low tolerance for anything that doesn’t serve the brand’s real purpose.
Josh Griffin
Josh is a firm believer that ground-breaking creativity can only be accomplished when we go beyond a traditional client-agency relationship to a partnership that is built on mutual trust, respect, and candor.
Josh has over 15 years’ experience and has collaborated with some of the world’s biggest brands such as Budweiser, Dunkin’, Verizon, Colgate-Palmolive, and Suntory to name a few.
Josh leads the team of over 70 people in North America and continues the 35+ year legacy of Design Bridge and Partners.
Stephanie Primus
Born and raised in Miami, Stephanie brings deep experience across both the LATAM and North American markets. She has worked across the client side, global agencies, and independent agencies, giving her a 360° view of how brands are built, scaled, and transformed. She is currently a Managing Director at Beardwood, where she partners with companies to solve complex brand and business challenges with clarity and precision. She does her best work in high-trust, high-performing environments where the bar is high and the impact is real. She is rarely surprised—and more often than not, already a few steps ahead of the challenges teams are facing.
Ru Soylu
Ru heads up the Client Services team at Koto New York, bringing 15 years of experience in leading client partnerships in brand strategy, identity, digital and advertising. She’s worked with brands across tech, fashion, AI, wellness, banking, fintech and CPG, always bringing a collaborative and empathetic mindset for both her clients and agency teams. Past work includes Adidas Originals, Lyft, Huntington and Figure.
Moderator
Mike Perry
Mike Perry is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer of TAVERN, a Brooklyn-based creative agency focusing on food, beverage and hospitality brands. With 15+ years of success in building industry-leading brands, Perry made a name for himself, both brand and agency side, with stints at NBC Sports Network, Quaker City Mercantile, Stranger & Stranger, Jones Knowles Ritchie (JKR), Design Bridge and TikTok Creative Labs. He has been behind some of the biggest rebrands in the industry, with clients including Budweiser, Beam Suntory, Burger King, and Diageo.
Perry creates timeless brands by taking inspiration from the brand’s past while simultaneously reimagining their equities for contemporary tastes and standards. Through this signature “modern heritage” branding philosophy, Perry and Tavern pair strategic storytelling with archival stewardship. They build brands that resonate with today’s audiences, as is evident in recent work with brands such as Sizzler, Old Grand-Dad, Burt’s Bees, Overholt Whiskey, and Old Crow, to name a few.
About WTC
Driving Manhattan’s Chinatown towards a future where tradition meets innovation, Welcome to Chinatown‘s mission is to bolster local businesses and entrepreneurs and forge connections within and across the community.