Team Members in the Field: Meet Maggie Aravena
Growth doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens when curious people are given room to learn, create, and lead, and that’s exactly the spirit behind Thrive, our annual focus for 2026 that is shaping how we work at Troyer Group. It felt like the right place to start something new: Team Members in the Field, a running series of interviews from the people behind our plans, our proposals, and our projects.
In this entry, we sat down with Magdalena “Maggie” Aravena, PLA, ASLA, a Landscape Architect Project Manager who helps bring visions and plans to life for communities across Indiana and beyond. Maggie spoke with our Marketing Specialist Makaela Douglas about her work, her team, and what keeps her curious.
A Role That Rarely Looks the Same Twice
Ask Maggie what a typical day looks like and the honest answer is that there isn’t one. Her broad background in landscape architecture has opened the door to a wide range of planning work, much of it alongside fellow project manager and Troyer Group President, Jonathon Geels. “Jonathon and I have worked on a lot of community and park master plans,” she said. “So, a lot of drawing, a lot of envisioning, whether it be what a park might look like in ten years or a comprehensive plan where we look at transportation.” That planning work has become a newer focus for her, and one she calls a ton of fun.
Design work fills out the rest of her plate, including a couple of plaza projects and recent campus work at Indiana University South Bend and Indiana University Bloomington. Lately, a lot of her time has gone toward proposals, which she doesn’t mind one bit. “It’s nice to see proposals in general because of the potential for exciting projects,” she said, noting that a proposal typically takes a couple of weeks to put together before it heads into a public bidding process that can take a while to play out.
Standing Out in a Crowded Field
Landscape architecture has gotten more competitive, and Maggie has thought a lot about what sets Troyer Group apart. Her answer starts with the firm’s multidisciplinary bench: planners, network and civil engineers, transportation professionals, as well as landscape architects and designers who each bring their own focus to the table. Add in the national projects she and Jonathon have worked on, along with the broader perspective that comes from active involvement in the American Society of Landscape Architects, and the result is a team that can bring fresh, nationally informed ideas to Indiana communities that are hungry for innovation but haven’t always had access to it. “Folks like us have that perspective, and we can bring something out of Indiana into the work,” she said. “That’s a huge plus.”
Rowing in the Same Direction
What keeps Maggie excited to come to work is, in her words, pretty simple: the people. She pointed to colleagues like Mike Reese, whose experience runs deep, and Ben Smedley, whose trail and planning work along with his background at the DNR make him someone she loves picking the brain of.
“We all have similar visions of the potential of landscape architecture on communities and trying to work toward those same goals. We’re all rowing the boat in the same direction.” – Maggie Aravena, Troyer Group Landscape Architect
A Favorite Project, and a New Way to Measure Impact
When asked about her favorite project so far, Maggie didn’t hesitate: the Elkhart Parks master plan, another collaboration with Jonathon. The project paired strong community engagement with a new approach to data, including matrices and metrics Jonathon developed to help measure the impact of parks, something Maggie believes is underused in the profession. “I think this will be impactful for the city of Elkhart,” she said.
What She Wants Clients to Know
Above all, Maggie wants clients to know that the people at Troyer genuinely care, both about the work itself and about the impact it has on the people they’re working with. “In our pursuit of design excellence, our clear, cohesive drawings or plans that we are delivering, at the core of it, we care about what we create and the impact it has on that community,” she said. That care is why the team pushes for better: so every client feels important, heard, and valued throughout the process.
Finding Inspiration Outside the Office
Maggie’s creative energy doesn’t stay confined to the studio. She paints and sews in her free time, activities she says keep her creative muscles working in ways that feed back into her design thinking. Running plays a different role entirely. “I use it to completely unplug my logical brain and to focus on the present moment,” she explained. “What is my body doing? Who’s around me? What am I seeing? Being able to get out of our critical thinking brain, even the creative brain, and focusing on the present moment and the physical experience of living, that has been therapeutic for me.”
Staying a Student of the Work
If there’s a thread that runs through everything Maggie shared, it’s a commitment to always learning. She recalled working with students at CU Boulder and being struck by how fresh their ideas were and how differently they approached problems. “It is tiring when you’re working day in and day out,” she said. “I think being able to take a step back and get a fresh perspective on the work that you do and trying to learn new things is what keeps us going as good, creative professionals. It’s the pursuit of long-term learning, creativity, and innovation.”
Where She Finds Inspiration
When asked who inspires her, Maggie didn’t point to a mentor or a famous designer. She pointed to her parents. As immigrants who lived through political upheaval in the 1980s and 1990s, they had to adjust, learn, and reinvent themselves more than once, all in pursuit of a better life and a chance for their kids to attend world-renowned schools. “The resilience and bravery that takes is inspiring,” she said.
That same resilience and curiosity are exactly what Thrive is meant to capture at Troyer Group, and exactly what makes Maggie’s story a fitting way to highlight our Team Members in the Field. Look for more from our team in the months ahead.
Want to learn more about the people behind The Troyer Group’s work? Get in touch or stay tuned for the next installment of Team Members in the Field.