Coffee with ACC Leadership

Since taking the helm at ACC in May 2022, Executive Director Andrea Specht has led the organization through key transformations in its work beginning with a comprehensive strategic planning process. Andrea has implemented a new vision of ACC’s mission with a focus on broadening the organization’s audience of makers and appreciators through the revitalization of regional events, vital programming, and the continued evolution of American Craft magazine.

Andrea has focused her career in the nonprofit sector, advancing causes that range from youth development and gender equity to the arts and higher education. Before coming to ACC, Andrea served as vice president of advancement and foundation executive director at Minnesota’s largest community college and before that, as the executive director of Artistry, a multidisciplinary arts organization reaching more than 85,000 people annually through professional theater productions, visual arts exhibitions, community-based arts education, and creative placemaking projects. Andrea has served as a board member for Minnesota Citizens for the Arts, the College of Visual Arts, and numerous other nonprofit organizations. Her interests include cooking and baking, plants and gardens, and spending time in the woods of northwest Wisconsin. Andrea discovered her passion for the visual arts in childhood and earned a BA in Studio Art magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Macalester College, where she also became certified to teach art K-12. She also holds a JD summa cum laude from the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

Preeti Gopinath is an internationally experienced designer, educator, craft researcher and philosopher based in New York. She is the founding Director of the acclaimed MFA Textiles program and Associate Professor of Textiles in the School of Fashion at Parsons, The New School.

In addition to her formal design training at the National Institute of Design, India, and extensive work in the textile industry, Preeti has a background in classical Bharatanatyam dance as well as philosophy studies, which inform her creative practice and her way of being in the world. She is a passionate advocate for craft in her research, creative practice and pedagogy. At Parsons, Preeti currently leads a community of mindful makers that aims to radically transform the world of insatiable consumption and unconscionable over-production – through textiles, valuing community, collaboration and mindful, hands-on making. Under her mentorship, Preeti’s students are creating groundbreaking, award-winning, hybrid textiles that integrate timeless philosophical principles with craft and technology, on the bedrock of sustainability, justice, wellbeing and beauty.

Preeti has served on the board of the American Craft Council (ACC) as a trustee since 2021, and as its Vice Chair since 2023. She remains committed to championing the importance of craft and elevating the value of craftspeople in contemporary society since she assumed her leadership role of Chair of the ACC’s Board of Trustees in the fall of 2024.