Amy Gustincic & Jay Ganaden of AIGA San Francisco: Make Your Own Luck

Written By Rachel Elnar

Amy and Jay kept saying “it's so hard to remember” and “everything kind of meshes together.”

Twenty years is a long time. Details fade. Stories blur.

And I think that’s the whole point. Because if I’ve learned anything from producing hundreds of events—from the ones that went sideways to the ones that somehow became legendary—it’s that the stuff that actually changes you rarely shows up on the agenda.

The Thing About Memory

Here’s what Amy remembers: Pittsburgh going “out of control.” Shirts coming off. Walking into hotel lobbies and seeing people sitting on each other’s laps. “Very inappropriate.” Here’s what she doesn’t remember: The personas exercise with the expensive foam core busts. Still annoyed she paid for those, though. (Relatable, honestly.)

Jay remembers walking across every bridge in Portland at 2 AM with Mike Joosse, looking for a bar. That’s it. Just walking. Pre-Uber. No plan, no destination, just two people in a city doing the thing.

Neither of them remember the programming. The sessions. The official stuff they probably spent months planning. And I think that’s actually okay. Maybe even good.

Because what they’re both doing now—Amy with her MBA running Studio Bellwether, Jay leading generative AI innovation at Adobe—came directly from the stuff they can’t quite remember the details of. The showing up. The 50+ events a year. The studio tours. The meeting people in hotel lobbies at weird hours.

“I believe in making your own luck,” Jay said. “You can put yourself in situations where good luck can happen.”

That’s the thing nobody tells you about networking. It’s not transactional. It’s atmospheric. You show up enough times and eventually something happens that changes everything—but you can’t always trace the exact line from point A to point B. And that’s fine. That’s actually the whole deal.

What Actually Changed

Jay career-switched three times. Tech to photography to design. Met someone at an SF Design Week studio crawl. That person eventually hired him. That led to Adobe. That led to everything. He didn’t plan that. He just showed up.

Amy watched herself evolve through AIGA—active board member to advisory board, SF to LA, getting an MBA, working differently. Each version of her contributed differently. Took different things away.

Neither of them are AIGA members anymore. Both totally fine with it.

“It was really great and important while I was,” Amy said. “And it’s just not something that fits in with what I’m doing right now.”

Yep. You can be done with something and still have it be one of the most important things you ever did. You can graduate. You can move on. The luck you made doesn’t un-make itself. That’s not a failure of the organization. That’s just how growth works.

The Question Nobody Wants to Ask Out Loud

Amy said it plainly: “I don’t really know what the design profession is anymore.” She knew exactly what she was getting into in design school. Brochures, annual reports, logos, album covers. Work at a studio. Done. Clear borders, clear craft. Now? “You make apps, I guess? Are you an influencer or you’re an app maker? I don’t know.”

Jay’s daughter is studying graphic design. She’s making videos of herself for student affairs, editing, publishing. Still using typography and color—but nothing’s static. The tools are everywhere. The community is everywhere. The profession is everywhere. “You can get a lot of the stuff that we got from AIGA in different ways. Free ways, online ways, meetups.”

So why pay for membership? Twenty years ago, that question would’ve sounded absurd. Now it’s just honest. We used to all be makers in the same way. Traded stuff at conferences. Connected over shared craft and tools and processes. The community had clear borders.

Now the borders are gone. And maybe that’s good? But it also means we’re all a little lost about what “design” even means anymore—and nobody’s really saying it out loud.

Why This Conversation Mattered

I keep doing these interviews because people don’t remember. Twenty years is too long. The details fade. The stories blur together. But talking to Amy and Jay, I realized the blur might be teaching us something.

The things that stick—the 2 AM bridge walks, the people going wild in Pittsburgh, the connections that became careers—those weren’t planned. They weren’t programmed. They just happened because people showed up in situations where good luck could happen.

And maybe that’s the thing we’re all missing now. Not the retreats specifically. Not even AIGA specifically. The showing up. The making your own luck. The being in rooms—or bars, or bridges—with people doing interesting things and just seeing what happens.

“We’re the gray hairs now,” Jay’s friend told him recently. Yeah. We are. And the stories we’re trying to save? They’re not really about the retreats at all. They’re about what happens when you decide to show up.

Want to hear Amy's full rant about the foam core busts? Or Jay's theory on luck? Or what actually went down in Pittsburgh that made it legendary? Listen to the full episode.

And if you’re on the fence about showing up to that thing—whatever it is—just go. See what luck you make.

More retreat stories, more pyramids, and forgotten programming:

Rachel Elnar
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