The votes have been tallied and the 2025 election results are in. Four new Directors were elected to SND’s Board of Directors: Marco Hernandez, Kaliz Lee, Peiying Loh and Alberto Lucas López. All newly elected officers and directors will serve 2-year terms.
Jon Wile is the Society of News Design’s President. Alex Fong, Rebecca Pazos and Yuri Victor around out the officer slate as Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer. Rounding out the Board is Allison Hong, Beto Alvarez, TK Sajeev Kumar and Martina Ibáñez-Baldor, who will serve the second year of their term. Please join us in thanking departing board members Dalit Shalom, Antonio Cucho, and past-president Ryan Hilderbrandt.
MEET THE OFFICERS
Jon Wile
President
Jon Wile is VP/Design at American City Business Journals in Charlotte, N.C. Jon oversees design for 40 business journals across editorial, advertising, events, marketing, product, and UX. He created and manages the News Design Desk and Business Design Desk, a pair of centralized design teams that have more than 50 designers across the U.S. Previously at ACBJ, Jon served as VP/Content as well as Creative Director, a role in which he redesigned all 40 papers and web sites. Before joining ACBJ in 2012, Jon worked in a variety of design and leadership roles at The Washington Post for seven years. He’s also worked at The Plain Dealer and Detroit Free Press. He’s a graduate of Kent State University, with a degree in newspaper journalism. Jon resides in Charlotte with his wife, Kristen, and their sons, J.J. and Teddy. He enjoys drinking/collecting bourbon, playing golf, watching Ohio State football and cooking.
Alex Fong
Vice President
Alex K. Fong is the deputy creative director for design at the San Francisco Chronicle and oversees a multidisciplinary team of designers, graphic artists, graphics reporters and developers. His more than 15 years of experience in the news industry has included leadership roles in newsrooms in the United States and overseas. In 2012, he collaborated on the redesign of some 80 daily print newspapers for Digital First Media, including the Los Angeles Daily News and the El Paso Times. During a four-year stint in China, Alex advocated for greater rigor in the practice of visual journalism and led the award-winning redesign of the Shanghai Star. Alex has mentored journalism students at the City College of San Francisco (where he was once a student) and currently serves on the journalism department’s advisory board. He is currently a member of SND’s Board of Directors. Alex is a musician in his spare time. He founded the post-punk band The Paper Tigers while living in Beijing. He builds his own audio electronics and has studied audio engineering and production privately at a recording studio near Oakland’s Jack London Square.
Yuri Victor
Treasurer
Yuri Victor is the current secretary/treasurer for The Society for News Design. He co-founded Vox.com and has worked with The New York Times and The Washington Post. He lives in New York.
Rebecca Pazos
Secretary
Rebecca is a proud mum of one and is dedicated to telling compassionate, human-centered data stories. She previously worked at The Straits Times as Data Visualisation Editor. She has worked with a team of developers, designers and reporters in Singapore for over eight years. She has a Bachelors in Communication (Journalism) from Griffith University, Australia and a Masters in visual storytelling from the University of Girona, Spain. Her team’s work has received multiple awards at SND’s best in digital design competition including 1 Gold, and multiple Silvers. Her individual portfolio has been awarded a Silver in 2020 and Bronze in 2023. She was awarded the inaugural Singapore Press Club’s Young Rising Star Digital Journalist of the Year award in 2022. She was also shortlisted in 2021 for the Sigma Data Journalism Awards. She cares deeply about upskilling people from all walks of life to become digital creators and has grassroot connections to community organisations such as Hacks/Hackers Singapore, Data Viz Sg, and Data Viz Society and beyond.
MEET THE DIRECTORS
Beto Alvarez
Beto Alvarez is a deputy news editor for the Los Angeles Times. Before that, he served as digital creative director at The San Diego Union-Tribune. Beto has worked in journalism for more than 25 years, beginning his career at The Dallas Morning News where he worked as a graphic artist and illustrator. He then spent eight years at The Philadelphia Inquirer as a graphic artist, illustrator and designer. Throughout his career, he has been recognized with numerous awards from The Society of News Design, Society of Professional Journalism, PRINT magazine, and Malofiej Awards for Infographics. He has also been the recipient of four regional Emmy Awards. Beto was born and raised in Texas, moving throughout the state as a youth. He currently lives in San Diego with his wife, Tiffany, their two children and two yappy dogs. He has also played bass guitar in a bunch of rock and roll outfits and is a lifelong skateboarding enthusiast.
Marco Hernandez
Marco Hernandez has worked in graphics for over 20 years, including Reuters, Singapore; La Nación, Costa Rica; and The South China Morning Post, Hong Kong. Marco joined The New York Times in 2021 and is graphics editor. Marco has received more than 160 awards from the Society for News Design, including “World’s Best Designer” in 2021, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2020 for his work with Reuters covering the protests in Hong Kong. Marco was also part of the team that won the 2023 and 2024 Pulitzer Prizes for coverage of the war in Ukraine and Gaza, respectively. In 2023, Ball State University honored him with the Majeri Award for Innovation and Leadership in Journalism. Marco grew up in Costa Rica and speaks Spanish. Having lectured on information design, he is always happy to share his experiences.
Allison Hong
Director
Allison Hong is a deputy design director at the Los Angeles Times. Before joining The Times in 2014, she was a page designer and Dow Jones News Fund copy editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She was born in L.A. but grew up in Guangzhou, China.
Martina Ibáñez-Baldor
Director
Martina Ibáñez-Baldor is a design director for Latino Initiatives at the Los Angeles Times. In this role she is focused on creating a new vertical that will explore Latino culture and identity. She also serves as the art director for @latimesplants and the Latinx Files newsletter. Since joining the Times in 2015, she has worked across sections including A1, California, Business, Op-Ed and features. She was the art director for the Food section from 2019-2021. She has worked on special projects such as The Chicano Moratorium 50 years later and the Día de Muertos digital altar. Before joining The Times, Ibáñez-Baldor worked for the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Milwaukee Magazine. She has a degree in journalism and Spanish from Marquette University. She was born in Toronto to immigrants from South American and raised in Milwaukee, WI.
Kaliz Lee
Kaliz is a Hong Kong-based designer with expertise in newsroom infographics and commercial design, spanning both print and digital media. During her decade in the newsroom, she has consistently explored diverse approaches to visual storytelling. Her team’s visual reporting work has received numerous awards, including SND Best in Show, WAN-IFRA Gold, Malofiej, Sigma delta chi journalism award, Gerald Loeb Award and more. She currently serves as an assistant graphics editor at the South China Morning Post.
Beyond her newsroom role, she undertakes projects for a variety of clients, including NGOs, government agencies, commercial brands, and cultural institutions. Her illustrations and graphic novels, often reflecting humanistic concerns and social issues, have been exhibited locally and internationally at venues like the Angoulême International Comics Festival, Hong Kong Lingnan University, and Vitra Design Museum.
Peiying Loh
Peiying Loh is the Head and Co-founder of Kontinentalist, an award-winning data-driven editorial studio that aims to bring Asia to the forefront of global conversations. Since its founding in 2017, Kontinentalist has told innovative and rigorous data stories on topics ranging from how the rubber industry in Singapore and Malaysia was shaped by colonialism, to communicating climate change in Southeast Asia. Peiying’s background and passion for history is the driving force behind many of her stories at Kontinentalist, and her work experience includes stints at various heritage-related institutions, including three years at the Asian Civilisations Museum’s curatorial department. With Kontinentalist, she seeks to empower voices through cause-driven stories as well as change people’s perception about Asia and its cultures. Peiying recently completed an MSc in Data, Inequality and Society at the University of Edinburgh’s Futures Institute with support from the Chevening Foundation.
Alberto Lucas López
Alberto Lucas López is a Senior Artist, New Narratives at National Geographic. Journalist, originally from Spain, his individual work has been recognized by more than 200 international awards from SND, Webby, SPD, WAN-IFRA, IIBA, DJA Global Editors Network, and CaGIS, among other organizations. It is worth highlighting he has been awarded with the Best of Show Malofiej—that distinguishes the best infographic in the world published of the year—, two Human Rights Award Malofiej, the Best Map of the World Miguel Urabayen Award, and the Impressive Individual Award from Information Is Beautiful Awards. Occasionally, Alberto serves as a jury in journalistic contests such as the Premio GABO, WAN-IFRA World Media Awards or the Society of Publishers in Asia Awards, and leads talks and workshops internationally on visual storytelling. Alberto is the former Graphics Director of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post newspaper; he has been part of the National Geographic family since 2016. In recent years Alberto has been spending his free time studying for a Ph.D. in Arts and Education (ongoing)
TK Sajeev Kumar
Director
TK Sajeev Kumar is the Deputy Editor/Visual Editor of Kerala Kaumudi, one of the oldest and leading Malayalam newspapers in Kerala, India. He is also the founder and director of Asia’s first non-profit newspaper design website, www.newspaperdesign.in, for which he has conducted five international newspaper design competitions. TK has previously served as an SND regional director (Asia-South Pacific) and as a jury member for competitions by the Society of News Design and WAN-IFRA. He has published four books, including one on news design