Maggie Daniel Memorial Foundation
Supporting authentic voices in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Engineering & Construction
Where Quiet Brilliance Takes Root
Program Highlights
Professional Growth
• Hands-on experience in your field
• Supportive mentorship
• Space to learn and grow
Community Connection
Making a Difference
• Weekly peer gatherings
• Genuine relationships
• Shared learning experiences
• Community volunteering
• Environmental stewardship
• Lasting local impact
What makes this program so special?
This program is unique because it invites applicants who exemplify what Maggie Daniel exemplified throughout her young and far too short life: a quiet genius that did not seek the limelight, did not “self-promote,” pursue or garner the awards and accolades that typify avowed prodigiousness. Maggie Daniel simply listened to and observed, through steadfast practice, the splendid cacophonies in nature, and then harmonized with them, as she immersed her hands in the soil, and basked in the joy of learning what that soil, and the landscape upon which its nutritious weight was outstretched, had to teach her. Maggie’s was not the melodic line of nature’s composition. Rather, her steadfast practice comprised an exquisite harmony with nature that never hogs the spotlight, but instead, rounds out that which grabs hold of the viscera of neighborhood passersby who stop to marvel at the stunning complexity of color scheme in a flower bed she planted. Maggie’s brilliance was the most simply stated: the shortcuts she offered with a quiet, un-mocking but knowing smile, and with no expectation of recompense, to her neighbors struggling with how to get ahead of hardy weeds dominating the crevices between the stone slates of their walkway. She sought only the satisfaction of seeing their sense of triumph when her simple, brilliant solution expedited their labors.
The harmonics of quiet brilliance are what make the the program distinctive, not least, because such brilliance is often occluded by neurological challenges (what are, of late referred to as “neuro-divergences”). It is not the challenges themselves, but the socio-cultural presumptions that they signal mental deficiency and/or the absence of capability to excel or to highly achieve, when quite the opposite is often the case. Maggie Daniel was such a person. Traditional pathways are rarely the avenues that best showcase neuro-divergent people’s strengths. This program celebrates what a firebrand Maggie Daniel actually was, and holds as its mission the solicitation of the unsung firebrands whose passions and extraordinary skillsets, like Maggie’s, cannot be brought to the surface by way of conventional laudatory standards.
