The women who rewrote what creative leadership looks like

There's a quiet irony at the heart of the design industry. For decades, it built structures that kept women out of the very rooms where decisions were made. And in doing so, accidentally produced something it hadn't bargained for: a generation of women who, locked out of the traditional model, built a better one.

Nowhere is that more visible than at AIGA NY. The largest local chapter in the country, shaped by women leaders for more than 43 years. Not as an exception. As the actual fabric of the place.

For Women's History Month, we spoke with five of those women, including executive director Stacey Panousopoulos, current president Sarah Williams, and former presidents Jennifer Kinon, Chelsea Goldwell, and Lyanne Dubon-Aguilar. What they shared wasn't a straightforward celebration of progress. It was sharper than that. A proper reckoning with what leadership actually means, and who's been allowed to define it.

A different model of power

For a long time, there was really only one image of what a creative leader looked like. The lone visionary, commanding the room, never seems to doubt themselves. Sarah Williams, current AIGA NY president and co-CEO of Beardwood&Co, knows exactly what that costs people: "For a long time, the industry conflated leadership with a certain kind of loudness. That model has deep roots, and it created an invisible bar: to be taken seriously, you had to perform authority in ways that weren't always authentic."

That bar wasn't neutral. It was built around a specific kind of person, leaving everyone else to decide whether to perform it anyway or find another way through.

A lot of these women found another way. Chelsea Goldwell, partner and creative director at Zero Studios, describes it like this: "I think leading a creative team can be a lot like coaching a basketball team. You're there to serve as a guide, a source of inspiration and put systems in place to help everyone succeed." Not a softer version of the old model. Something structurally different – built around enabling people rather than directing them.

And it works. That's what's shifting, Williams says. "Credibility is increasingly established through proof – through work, through community-building, through results. That opens doors for women who lead through depth rather than volume." A designer recently told someone on her team that working at Beardwood had shown her "a different version of female leadership – one that didn't feel like it was trying to replicate the traditional command-and-control model of power". Williams is quick to share that credit: "I give huge credit to the women on my team who made that experience real. It's how they show up every day."

A lineage, not a moment

AIGA NY's story isn't about one big hire or one pivotal year. It's a thread. Women passing something forward, decade by decade, each one leaving the place a bit different from how they found it.

Jennifer Kinon, founder of Champions Design and president from 2008 to 2012, traces it all the way back to the beginning. "Paula Scher was a founding member and early president. New York City Design's truest leader." She remembers watching Emily Oberman at every AIGA NY event – "with her big three-ring binder and tote sitting in the front row, large and in charge and so cool" – and the presidency of Carin Goldberg that followed, which she describes as firm, fair, and the moment that got the brand properly in shape. Goldberg also recruited Stacey Panousopoulos, who has served as executive director for nearly half the chapter's existence. Not a bad bit of hiring.

Panousopoulos talks about what she learned from those women not as tactics or knowledge, exactly, but as "a deep sense of care for this community, an understanding that AIGA NY is a living thing that reflects the values of the people who steward it". Lyanne Dubon-Aguilar felt it too, joining the board under Ida Woldemichael: "She led by inviting conversation and pushing our board to reimagine what AIGA NY could and should be."

The doors that stay closed

None of this is a clean win, and nobody's pretending otherwise. Panousopoulos is direct about the central contradiction: "Women make up a significant portion of design graduates and practitioners, yet those numbers don't correspond in leadership. Women of colour have faced, and continue to face, compounding barriers in the field."

Some of those barriers are the obvious ones – pay, seniority, who gets the senior title and who doesn't. Others are quieter and, in some ways, harder. Goldwell is one of the few people in her field who talks openly about what it actually looks like to lead while also being a mother: "I never had a creative director that I saw experience pregnancy, or go on maternity leave, or pump at work or needed to balance the duties of her role and sick kids. I do my best to share these experiences with my team so it feels like the norm vs the exception."

Then there's what Dubon-Aguilar calls out: the circular logic that keeps so many doors closed before anyone even reaches them. "Too often, opportunities are only extended to those who already have the experience. If you want to be on a board, you're first asked: have you been on a board?" It's a system that doesn't need to announce itself to keep working, which is exactly why AIGA NY's work matters – not as symbolism, but as something practical. As Panousopoulos puts it: "The alternative is not neutrality. It's exclusion by default."

What the next generation is owed

The advice here isn't really about tactics for combating all of this. It's about permission. "Don't wait until you feel completely ready to take on a leadership role," says Panousopoulos. "Readiness is a moving target, and it often looks different for women than for their peers. The work will stretch you. That's the point."

Williams keeps it simple: "Build a point of view, not just a portfolio. The designers who move into leadership can articulate not just what they made but why it matters."

And Dubon-Aguilar brings it back to the thing that's made this community worth belonging to in the first place: "I am extremely grateful to the individuals who contributed to my growth by being transparent about their experiences, whether that was salary, career trajectory, or opportunities they'd come across. That generosity shaped me. Take what's on offer and be sure to give back to the collective."

Forty-three years in, AIGA NY isn't a monument to what women have achieved in the creative industry; it's an ongoing argument for what leadership can look like when you stop mistaking loudness for vision, and actually start building something that lasts.