The Institute of Internal Auditors
In 2025, I began work with a large professional association that generates over $80 million a year in revenue.
I work within an established brand and create effective experiences across audiences, channels, and constraints.
Role: Senior Graphic Design Specialist
Responsibilities: Print and Media Design • Print Management • Digital Marketing • Creative Direction
The Challenge:
Work within an established design system
Create conference- and initiative-specific branding while maintaining the overall IIA brand
Make complex information accessible and understandable to an international audience
Outcomes
250K+ global members reached
50+ technical and educational projects annually
14 conferences and events supported annually
114 countries represented at the International Conference
The IIA
-
With over 250,000 members worldwide, the IIA is an established global brand with an enormous range of content, audiences, and touchpoints. My challenge is to work within that existing system while adapting it to very different needs, from dense technical research and certification campaigns to international conferences and environmental graphics.
Each project requires finding the right balance between brand consistency, clarity, and visual impact, often translating complex information into something people can quickly understand and act on.
For the member on the other side of that complexity, the experience needs to feel simple: clear information, an obvious next step, and confidence that the IIA can help them move forward.
-
To be successful in my current in-house marketing role, I work to:
01 | Make Complexity Feel Simple
I work with technical research, educational content, and complex subject matter that can easily become overwhelming. I focus on hierarchy, pacing, and visual storytelling to help people quickly understand what matters without oversimplifying the information. The goal is to move the audience from overwhelmed by information to confident about what matters next.
02 | Find Freedom Within the System
I didn't create the IIA brand; my job is to make it work. I look for opportunities within established guidelines to keep the work fresh and engaging while maintaining consistency across very different audiences, campaigns, and channels.
03 | Design for Where It Lives
I design with the final experience in mind. A report, webpage, catalog, conference sign, and 20-foot environmental graphic can't be approached the same way. I consider scale, viewing distance, context, production, and how people will actually interact with the work, not just how it looks on my screen.
04 | Think Globally
Designing for an international organization means creating work that can travel. I consider how layouts will accommodate translation, how imagery and messaging will resonate across audiences, and how designs will adapt across markets and formats. The goal is to create experiences that feel consistent and clear, wherever they're encountered.
-
These principles come together in projects like IIA's Learning Catalog. With an established brand system and a defined business objective, my job wasn't to reinvent the identity—it was to explore how far I could push the creative while remaining unmistakably IIA.
The assignment: Create a new cover for the annual Learning Catalog that felt fresh and engaging while working within IIA's established visual identity.
-
Good design doesn't just communicate information. It helps move people from how they feel now to how they need to feel next.
Working with IIA's lead copywriter, I helped conduct and analyze hundreds of Voice of the Customer surveys, looking beyond what members said they wanted to uncover the emotions underneath: uncertainty, pressure, ambition, frustration, and the desire to feel prepared for what's ahead.
We use those insights as a filter for creative decisions. Before asking what a campaign should look like, we can ask: How does our audience feel now? How do we want them to feel? What will help move them there?
The research has created a growing library of customer insight that can inform campaigns for years, helping us design not just around what members need to know, but how they need to feel in order to take the next step.
-
My work at The IIA operates at a truly global scale. I design across 6+ revenue and engagement channels, support 14 annual conferences and events, and help transform 50+ technical reports, research pieces, and educational campaigns each year into accessible visual communications. My work has contributed to content translated into 30+ languages, catalogs distributed to 260,000+ members, and the 2026 International Conference experience for 2,000+ attendees from 114 countries. Today, The IIA's reach extends to 265,000+ members across 170+ countries and territories, making every design decision part of a much larger global experience.
Behind that scale is the same goal: make a complex global organization feel clear, relevant, and useful to the individual member trying to move forward in their career.
Final 2026 Learning Catalog Cover: Selected for its dynamic sense of motion, which the EVP described as feeling “in the middle of the action.” Printed and mailed to 250,000+ members.
2026 Learning Catalog Cover Ideation: Explored visual concepts conveying forward thinking, global connectivity, and a sense of movement and progress.
Print Magazine Cover: Introduced the updated CIA certification criteria, with clothing and visual elements recolored in the brand’s signature burgundy to reinforce brand recognition.
CIA Rebrand Interior Spreads: Transformed complex data into engaging, accessible visuals that capture attention and communicate value to internal auditors.
Print Magazine Ad: Combines conference-specific branding with dynamic fire imagery to evoke excitement, energy, and engagement.
Digital Asset: Uses a distinctive, conference-specific visual treatment to balance professionalism with a sense of energy and playfulness.
IIA Conference Environmental Graphics
2026 Conference in Singapore | Attended by 2000+ members
