Anne-Marie Byrd is an Art Director and visual artist with over 20 years of multidisciplinary design expertise inspired by a passion for pushing boundaries and crafting aesthetic yet purposeful solutions.
Anne-Marie has always had a sense of adventure and optimism, and horses have always played a large part in her life. Drawing and painting horses as well as many other animals, took her to art school and beyond. But it was a longing to find community and pushing boundaries to create a more just and sustainable world that led her to the Burning Man festival and a fascination with immersive art.
As head of the Marketing at ConnectPay Payroll Services, Anne-Marie leads a team of both in-house and outsourced marketers to represent a consistent brand across the website, social and email channels, as well as internal company communications. Her team is charged with supporting the sales team and their customers by delivering marketing campaigns and experiences that help to inspire small business owners to simplify their business processes through payroll and beyond and engage local, dedicated vendors who will provide them the best service.
Under her leadership, ConnectPay has built and refined its brand as a payroll company for small businesses, revamped their website and increased conversions of online leads by 300%. Her team assisted the growing payroll company in expanding the Mergers and Acquisitions department with a dedicated website, white paper downloads and marketing outreach campaigns. ConnectPay is set to release their new payroll program, Relay, in 2024 featuring a custom logo that Anne-Marie worked closely with typography designers from Type Network foundry to create.
Prior to joining ConnectPay, Anne-Marie worked at various businesses bringing her design talents to trade show exhibits and large scale signage and vehicles. After college, she won an Audubon Society of Massachusetts poster design competition. Her extensive experience painting murals and luxury faux finishes, as well as fine furniture led her to exciting experiences exhibiting at both the Architectural Digest Home Show and the NY Gift Show at Pier 94 in New York City.
Passionate about sharing her knowledge of design, Anne-Marie has been an instructor teaching Adobe Illustrator, and also Surface Design techniques, for Rhode Island School of Design’s Continuing Education Department since 2011. She greatly enjoys seeing her students flourish as they gain confidence in a program they once thought impossible to use and create beautiful vector artwork.
Anne-Marie holds a B.F.A. in Illustration from Rhode Island School of Design.
