Being Marketing Director of AIGA Portland is one of the great and unexpected joys of my life.
When I started volunteering with AIGA, it started out as just a way to make friends. I was going to Portland for work frequently and I wanted to get out there and see more than just the typical tourist spots (I had already seen the Japanese Garden probably 10 times 😂). I figured the best way to get involved was to serve their community.
I started out as newsletter chair, creating the monthly newsletter and in that process met one of my best friends - Cassie! I also helped another good friend Audrey out with a really cool Design for Good initiative called “The Transparency Initiative.” TTI gave a voice to creatives to talk more about agency life and where they thought agencies stood on DEI. During that time I took great pride in my graphic design work and operational expertise that when the board position opened up, it meant a lot when Audrey said she thought I’d be perfect for it.
When interviewing for it and taking the reins, I’ll admit, I felt a little bit of impostor syndrome. I had never worked in marketing and besides a couple of MBA classes, certainly never directed a marketing campaign. Managing a group of volunteers also seemed a little daunting. That all being said, to make up for what I deemed were shortfalls, I created some goals for that time that I thought were achievable:
1. Fun first, volunteering second - I wanted people to connect to each other and have the experience I had. This included creating some in-person meetings where we could just have fun, not talk business. Those proved to be the best and most rewarding part of my time as Marketing Director.
2. Be consistent - Our past AIGA Volunteer Director said that the best way to stand out is to always be willing to reply and move things forward. I took this to heart and made sure I was very available and created an environment where our volunteers could reach us.
3. Bring more people to an organization I love through social traffic - I knew just by posting more we would get more traffic but finding ways to involve and cross collaborate with other organizations were top of mind.
As I got into the role, it turned out that many of the best ideas didn’t even come from me, it came from facilitating an open community.
As I get ready to roll off in the next couple months and onboard the next marketing director, some words of reassurance I was able to give them was to rely on our team. My investment in fun and keeping volunteer tasks small and achievable has given us a team with high retention and engagement. I provided an open environment where they could ask questions and it created a social strategy beyond my wildest dreams. It included amazing reels, a dip into TikTok, anniversary posts, social coverage of the volunteer experience and even more. I’ve learned that community leadership depends not only on providing the right environment but also a strong team.
I'm thankful for AIGA Portland and the introduction it gave me into building a strong community.
