Rachel Elnar is AIGA’s new President—designer, educator, and longtime community builder with over two decades of involvement in AIGA at the chapter and national level.

I’ve spent twenty-five years in this industry, and learned that none of us make it alone. Believe me, I’ve tried.

I have the group chats to prove it—the same handful of people who’ve shown up every time things got bad, like the time a client said something that gutted me, or that deadline that I missed when the power cut out mid-project, a very specific kind of rage I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

And the bigger one: watching my whole team get laid off, myself included, when the org that absorbed us decided the whole program I’d built didn’t need to exist. None of it made losing that job hurt less. But the people who supported me made it bearable. That’s the whole thing, really.

If you’re having a good year, I’m genuinely glad. Keep it going. If you’re not, and your team’s shrunk from six to two, or you flinch a little every time another “open to work” post appears in your feed, you were never meant to carry that alone. I’ve tried gritting my teeth and handling it myself. Mostly it just makes me tired and a little crabby at dinner.

Even a month into my presidency, I keep noticing the same pattern: people choosing each other on purpose. One new chapter board member joined right in the middle of his own job search, not despite it. Another came back after years away and told me: “I missed this too much to stay gone.” Nobody’s getting anything out of this except each other—the people who lead it, and the people who just show up because they need somewhere to be.

So here’s what I’m actually tending to this month: not a strategy, not an initiative, not yet. Right now, I want AIGA to feel like one of your group chats—the kind where someone notices you’ve gone quiet and actually texts back “you good?” instead of just wondering.

What’s one true thing about how this year has felt for you? Not the LinkedIn version, although I love LinkedIn. We’d love to know.

Till next month,
Rachel