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Cheers & Tiers: Building Ladders, Not Pedestals—Leadership Wisdom from Ashleigh Axios

With her impressive journey from AIGA DC volunteer to White House Creative Director to AIGA National Board President, Ashleigh offered insights that left me inspired and energized about the power of design leadership.

Author

Rachel Elnar
April 27, 2025

Our latest Cheers and Tiers episode featured someone I’ve long admired in the design community—the incredible Ashleigh Axios! What struck me most about Ashleigh’s story was her progression from simply “setting up chairs at events” for AIGA DC to eventually leading the entire national organization.

Her 13-year AIGA leadership journey included roles as programming coordinator, sponsorship chair, local chapter president, national conference chair, board director, and ultimately national president during the challenging pandemic years.

As Ashleigh explained, her involvement wasn’t calculated career-climbing but organic community building: “The more you give and put into community, the more you get out of it. Not in a transactional way,” she noted, but in the meaningful connections and growth that naturally follow genuine engagement.

Creating Impact Through DotGov Design

Perhaps Ashleigh’s most tangible design legacy is her work connecting government designers. Recognizing how isolated these creatives were across different agencies, she launched DotGov design as an AIGA DC initiative to foster collaboration and resource-sharing among designers working with taxpayer dollars.

What began as monthly meetups eventually grew into conferences that drew participants from state and local governments nationwide. Incredibly, the first prototype discussions for the US Web Design System—now used across government websites—emerged from one of these gatherings. Talk about design making real-world impact!

Leadership Wisdom from Ashleigh

Throughout our conversation, Ashleigh shared several powerful takeaways about leadership and community building:

  1. Community ownership means letting go: “When you’re doing stuff in community, it’s such a different vibe,” Ashleigh reflected, noting how proud she is that the initiatives she started continue without her direct involvement. “It’s cool to see things even continue to grow up without you.”

  2. Management skills transfer: Ashleigh gained her first management experience through AIGA, overseeing a team of 23 volunteers. This became a turning point in her career when she could tell potential employers, “Actually, I manage a team of 23 people outside of here.”

  3. Succession planning is essential: “You’ve failed if you move out of a role and nobody else can do that work after you,” Ashleigh emphasized. Great leaders deliberately build systems and mentor successors.

  4. Know your working style: Through co-leading programming with another board member, Ashleigh learned important lessons about her own leadership preferences. “I learned about myself what works for me, and what doesn't work for me,” saving her from similar challenges later in her career.

  5. Sometimes you deserve to just be a member: After years of service culminating in leading the national organization during a pandemic, Ashleigh embraced Lisa Babb's wisdom that “after a certain amount of service, you get to graduate to just being a member.”

Chatting with Ashleigh reminded me why I fell in love with the design community in the first place: we’re a group of creative problem-solvers who care deeply about using our talents to make things better for others. Whether designing for government services or building professional communities, we’re showing the world what thoughtful leadership can achieve.

More about AIGA DC’s DotGov: dc.aiga.org/dotgovdesign

Want to hear more stories like Ashleigh’s? Subscribe to Cheers & Tiers on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll have more episodes featuring your friends and your favorite design leaders, sharing their journeys, challenges, and triumphs.

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