by Thomas Phinney
The most recent ATypI board meeting, Friday, September 6, held a vote to elect new Board officers. Our previous officers were me as President, Nada Abdallah as Vice President, Carima El-Behairy as Treasurer, and Jason Pamental as Secretary.
Our new officers are former Treasurer Carima El-Behairy as the new President, David Lemon replacing Carima as Treasurer, Clare Bell as the new Secretary, and Nada Abdallah continuing as Vice President. They all bring not only experience as veteran ATypI board members, but wisdom and insight. I know Carima has a strong vision of things she wants to accomplish, and I shall be pleased to support her and the new executive as a board member.
I would like to thank the ATypI board and membership for their trust and support throughout my term. I owe a special thanks to my fellow officers Nada, Carima, and Jason, to Executive Director Tamye Riggs, and to Senior Events Coordinator Marta Myszewska for their hard work and support.
Departing Secretary Jason Pamental is actually leaving the board, as he has served two full terms for a total of six years, so his term is up. Also leaving the board thanks to term limits is Carolina Laudon, who has the distinction of having been the first female president of ATypI, and who has also been a tireless contributor during her time on the board, right to the end.
2024 saw our first conference in the Australasia region, in Brisbane, Australia. The locals were very welcoming, and the content was great, but it was also an unusually small conference; Brisbane was very hard for people to get to outside of Australia and New Zealand.
As I end my term as president, I am pleased to have dramatically improved ATypI’s financial footing, among other internal challenges. Although I was tempted to run for re-election because of the many things I would love to help get done, my non-ATypI workload and family commitments were and are… not lightening up. I do not have the time to do the job properly, so it is better that I step down, and somebody else take on more responsibilities for our community.
I continue to believe that ATypI has a unique and vital role in the font and typography community, and I will remain on the board for some time yet to contribute to that. Yet I am also called to other tasks which need me in particular, some of which are also of great importance to our community. (Follow me on Mastodon if you want to keep up on that: @tphinney@typo.social)