Madona comes from a diverse background of cultures, religion and thinking. From Indian classical dance and music to western, from sports to theatre, she was taught to look at the world from many lenses. Having left a career as a genetic engineer to pursue architecture, she says she finds herself “just where I ought to be, forever at the crossroads of the why, how, and what-next.” Since she began practicing in 2008, she has worked on large-scale development projects in Singapore, Sri Lanka, India, and Vietnam. Her portfolio includes convention centers in Egypt and the Middle East, and high-end hospitality projects in the United States. She’s currently focusing her curiosity and human-thinking approach on the Workplace sector, where her duties include business development, project management, and design-strategy needs for the future of workspaces and places.

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To be a successful leader is to remain a student, Madona says, and to do so, she collaborates across the firm as an active member of the Women’s Leadership Initiative. She’s also influential on the firm’s Sustainability Committee, having led the Chicago studio to the first WELL v2 Platinum-certified project in the state of Illinois. She’s a mentor through the PE Mentorship program and part of the 2022 AIA Chicago Bridge Mentorship Program. She’s also the Chicago studio’s leader for the Project Management Committee, which teaches the next generation of project managers the hard and soft skills for executing a successful project. She also takes pride in nurturing relationships at the grass roots as the scholarship chair for Chicago Women in Architecture, giving young women architects the foundation, hope, and vision for what life as an architect could be.