January 2024 Chapter Leader of the Month: Ekaansh Kalra

Howdy! I am a senior at Texas A&M University, pursuing a major in Environmental Design Architectural Studies with a minor in Urban Planning. I am the President of the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS). I have helped lead six committees ( Mentorship, AXIOM publication, Marketing, Freedom by Design, Task Force, Career Fair, and AIA Liason). This semester, Freedom by Design (led by Shelby Rajski) built a public seating area next to the School of Architecture. We organized our first fall Career Fair through our Career Fair Committee (led by Ava Greaney). Additionally, our Task Force committee (led by Ryan Hartfiel) scheduled five tutorial sessions that helped teach software like Rhino, Revit, Illustrator, Keyshot, and Photoshop. Additionally, we redesigned our mentorship program through the mentorship committee (led by Mallory Jordan), which helped engage with our first-year students. The Marketing Committee, led by Samantha Guzman, increased our social media engagement and helped with our outreach to other organizations. Our student publication Axiom, led by Jayne Goodman and Andrea Hinojosa, helped curate our first student exhibition, and we are currently producing our annual publication. The AIA Liason, Ainsley Littlefield, organized a speed mentoring event with local professionals.

I would also like my executive team for all the support and logistics this semester: Zachary Landrum, Kate Holbrook, Nate Sorenson, and Kayla Sidik, and all the fantastic chairs that help organize and create events. I would also like to thank Andrew Hawkins for all his support throughout the semester.

I would also like to thank all the amazing chairs who helped organize and create the events and meetings: Aidan Lozano, Nhu Le, Maya Rubio, Sophie Trevino, Leah Thaxton, Blanca Macias, Jade Radford, Maria Nguyen, Subin Song, Jun Lee, Kamryn Thresher, Aidan Shertzer, Taite McCray, Queenie Ntoutoume, Cristina Candia, Naman Dsai, Kaden Thurmond, Queenie Ntoutoume, Cristina Candia, Naman Dsai, Kaden Thurmond, Angela Robles, Alex Ignatow, Lindsay Poe, Ashley Lancaster, Alyssa Foertsch, Kaymi Wolff, Addison Henson and Fatima Castro, Kaitlyn Walker, Jett Davis, Maxine Huang, Austin Taylor and Yash Kakkad.