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YWCA's annual AWA event celebrates the women who are making our world more equitable, inclusive, and just.
For three years, I led the art direction for YWCA of Nashville & Middle Tennessee’s AWA program, which supports the largest domestic violence shelter in Tennessee and provides economic empowerment for women. The AWA (Academy for Women of Achievement) honors the women who are making a difference in the Nashville community – leading the way to a more equitable, inclusive, and just world.
Each event had a different theme and design direction, inspired by the social and economic climate of the year. Once we met with the client to discuss any messages they wanted to emphasize, I went back to research and develop several concepts that I would pitch to the YWCA leaders for a final decision. It was a personal mission of mine to find new ways to interact with the honorees and event attendees despite budgetary and resource limitations. Knowing that the honorees would be interviewed for their feature, I made sure the concept could translate into questions that tied the series of interviews together. One year, I designed stickers to encourage conversation around the theme, even if it meant applying the stickers to hundreds of booklets ourselves (which it did)!
The year 2020 was the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment – which states that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”
Alongside the historic imagery of women who persisted despite all imaginable obstacles, the modern-day stories from the honorees remind us to maintain the movement towards racial, gender, and religious equity in our communities.
Each year that I worked on this project feels like a time capsule – a celebration of women's lives and courage in times when hope and light might've felt a little harder to find. The process of developing the theme always inspired a lot of reflection and conversation across the entire company.
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