Skip to content
Mission

Margaret Sullivan Studio collaborates with forward-thinking civic and cultural organizations. We envision, program, and design social impact, social justice, and educational institutions for the future.

We create conditions for communities to flourish.

Margaret Sullivan Studio uses design to empower public libraries and other mission-driven institutions to realize their fullest potential. We create experiences and advance places that contribute to community improvement and individual enlightenment.

Our country’s public spaces and institutions can strengthen communities and enable social cohesion with intentional design and innovation. Our strategies foster cultural identity and community gathering, broadening experiences and learning for all!

We help clients envision their preferred future.

Our Studio provides strategic planning, master facilities planning, architecture and interior design, organizational development, and community engagement services. 

We continually evolve our design process and grow our understanding so that we are able to transform visions into tangible realities. Our ideas help move the public library industry towards a community-centered model through the utilization of participatory, service, and human-centered design.  Our work empowers clients to catalyze their communities! 

We are national experts.

Our Studio connects innovators, futurists, and contemporary library service ideas to librarians and community leaders, and we continue to revolutionize the industry by introducing impact-driven techniques to public space and experience design. We devise new methodologies and design strategies to reflect the Aspen Institute’s “People, Places and Platforms” and American Library Association’s “Libraries Transform” approach. 

Since the firm’s establishment in 2014, Margaret Sullivan Studio has worked with over forty public library systems to define their 21st century library. These organizations include New York Public Library, Richland (SC) Library, D.C. Public Library, Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, New Haven Free Public Library, Salt Lake City Public Library, and Memphis Public Library

We uphold our clients’ values.

Our team ensures the realization of strategic goals by applying an iterative design process and collaborating with experts. We serve as liaison, steward, translator, and integrator to uphold our clients’ goals. We facilitate communication among multi-disciplinary practitioners to maintain a culture of inquiry for powerful results. 

Team
Margaret Sullivan,

Principal

Margaret Sullivan is a national thought leader in assisting public libraries envision their preferred future. Since founding her firm Margaret Sullivan Studio in 2014, she has worked with the country’s leading library systems including the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, New York Public Library, DC Public Library, Richland (SC) Library, Salt Lake City Public Library and Charlotte Mecklenburg Library on a variety of projects including Strategic Planning, Master Facilities Planning, Visioning, Programming, Architecture & Interior Design and Staff Workshops. She is a national leader in effective Community Engagement, conducting meaningful dialogue to foster community goals. She leads a studio of designers who skillfully collaborate with stakeholders and the design team to represent a holistic understanding of the institution’s service model and is a leader in translating these design goals into physical spaces. Prior to establishing her own firm, Margaret worked for prestigious architecture firms including H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture as Director of Interior Design. In 2017, Margaret was named one of Interior Design Magazine’s Rising Stars. margaret@margaretsullivanllc.com
Lee Nel,

Director of Design

Lee Nel has extensive experience in several aspects of civic and public projects, including a variety of roles ranging from Designer and Project Architect to Owner’s Representative. She is passionate about solving design challenges and working with clients to develop the best processes and solutions to each unique project and community. Her success can be attributed to her ability to create a collaborative team, inclusive of all stakeholders and consultants, that clearly and effectively illustrates and documents a design that can carry a project through the construction process and post occupancy. Her broad range of experiences and projects, brings a unique insight to managing and overseeing small to complicated projects of various scales and needs, from non profits to large corporate clients. lee@margaretsullivanllc.com
Samantha Mayo,

Designer

Samantha Mayo, a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology’s School of Art and Design, is an interior designer at MSS. Since joining the Studio, she has served as project manager on a variety of work including strategic plans, master facilities plans, interior design, and programming projects. Samantha creates meaningful and fun materials for community engagement workshops she facilitates across the country, and skillfully synthesizes outcomes into consumable and informative results. Her design approach leads to intuitive, purposefully-designed, human-centered solutions, using an iterative process rooted in community involvement. samantha@margaretsullivanllc.com
Annika Northland,

Designer

Annika is an urban placemaker and designer who finds joy in the discovery and energy of public spaces. Her place-based lens centers the human-experience in public space to inform best practices for placemaking and design. Since joining the studio, Annika has served as an urban placemaker on facilities plans and community engagement projects, conducting meaningful community engagement and skillfully synthesizing results to generate useful tools that serve communities. annika@margaretsullivanllc.com
Shuyu Fang,

Design Strategist

Shuyu is graduated from School of Visual Arts with a degree in Design For Social Innovation. Shuyu aims to amplify the voices of marginalized communities and address their needs through systemic and human-centered design interventions that drive collective action. She has served as a designer and design strategist for a variety of project types including community engagement, strategic planning and visual communication. Because of her background in jewelry design, Shuyu has always been attentive to and pondered the importance of sustainability in design, as well as how to address social, environmental, and cultural issues through design. shuyu@margaretsullivanllc.com
Sampriti Sheth,

Architectural Designer Community Strategist

August Vollbrecht,

Studio Manager

August is a visual artist who is always looking for opportunities to apply her knowledge, add to the web of experience, and dance with complexity. Seeking to engage new solutions through rigorous inquiry, drawing connections to capitalize strengths, mend cracks, and deconstruct faulty beliefs. August strives to align her self and others with thought-out values to collectively build a brighter future. august@margaretsullivanllc.com
Violeta Smart,

Designer

Violeta is a designer and urban placemaker with a passion for equitable, nurturing, and resilient public spaces. With a background in architecture and criminal justice reform, her work focuses on participatory design, strategic planning, and community engagement. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo and works as a lead designer at MSS. violeta@margaretsullivanllc.com
Marie Rudnicki,

Designer

Jade Esplin,

Director of Strategy

Jade is a designer and strategist who is energized by how our environment impacts our experience. She has worked in the architecture and design industry for 8+ years, where I’ve helped companies navigate change, envision the future of libraries, work, education and much more. She has created spatial transformations –from start to finish– using research and human-centered design strategies. jade@margaretsullivanllc.com
Collaborators

We partner with national leaders and experts to collaborate and create customized processes and solutions to meet each project's goals.

Arch Nexus

Architecture Salt Lake City, UT archnexus.com

Bohlin Cywinski Jackson

Architecture San Francisco, CA bcj.com

Boudreaux

Architecture Columbia, SC https://www.boudreauxgroup.com/

Cannon Design

Architecture New York, NY cannondesign.com

HR&A

Economic Development New York, NY https://www.hraadvisors.com/

McMillan Pazdan Smith

Architecture Greenville, SC archnexus.com

Mitchell Giurgola

Architecture New York, NY mitchellgiurgola.com

Simpson Coulter Studio

Architecture Las Vegas, NV simpsoncoulter.com

WGM Architects

Architecture Annapolis, MD wgm-arch.com

Einwiller Kuehl

Landscape Architecture Oakland, CA einwillerkuehl.com

Danielle Milam

Urban Planner, Community Developer, Organizational Innovator Las Vegas, NV

Karp Strategies

Community Planning, Urban Planning, Strategy Consulting New York, NY https://www.karpstrategies.com/

LGA Architecture

Architecture Las Vegas, NV https://lgaarchitecture.com/

KME Architects

Architecture Las Vegas, NV https://www.kmearchitects.com/

Maureen Sullivan

Library Organization Development Consultant East Haddam, CT

Patrick Quattlebaum

Service Design & Strategy Atlanta, GA thisisharmonic.com

PGAL Architecture

Roberta Phillips

Chief Executive Officer, Prince George's County Memorial Library District Prince George's County, Maryland