Maya Bird-Murphy
Maya Bird-Murphy is the Founder of Mobile Makers, an award-winning nonprofit that expands access to design education through workshops, community engagement, public installations, and pop-ups hosted out of retrofitted mail trucks in Chicago and Boston. Maya's work centers on empowering people to see themselves as agents of change in the spaces they inhabit while advocating for more equitable and inclusive approaches to the built environment.
Rooted in her own experiences as a Black woman pursuing studies in a predominantly homogenous field, Mobile Makers began as Maya's master's thesis, addressing the lack of diversity in architecture. After encountering many of the same barriers upon entering the profession, she forged a new path by transforming Mobile Makers into a nonprofit dedicated to tackling challenges the industry had long overlooked. Initially, Mobile Makers offered design workshops from a retrofitted mail truck, bringing hands-on programming directly into Chicago neighborhoods. Within five years, growing demand led Maya to expand to Boston and open a kid-friendly brick-and-mortar space in Chicago, allowing the organization to offer year-round programming.
As her architectural practice and perspective have evolved, Maya has also launched Alternative Practice, a living digital archive documenting innovative design practices that challenge the status quo, and Design Summit for Friends of Friends, an "unconference" that reimagines traditional design discourse while elevating underrecognized creatives.
Maya was selected by Prada and Theaster Gates as an Experimental Design Lab Awardee, named a 2025 Lori Healey Rising Leader Awardee, a 2024 United States Artists Fellow, a 2023 Harvard Wheelwright Prize Finalist, and the recipient of the 2022 Hublot Pierre Keller Award. She has lectured at institutions including Cornell University, Pratt Institute, and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and has spoken at convenings including the MAXXI Museum Conference on Education, the Deem Symposium, the International WELL Building Conference, and Giants of Design.
As Mobile Makers approaches its 10th anniversary in 2027, Maya continues to expand opportunities for young people to engage in architecture and design while challenging the industry to become more inclusive, community-centered, and representative of the people it serves.
