Maia is an Urban Designer and Architect (registered in RI) at the San Francisco Planning Department. She co-leads design review on current projects and provides design expertise in the development of building form, open space, and policy in future planning efforts. She co-leads the Department’s Urban Design Advisory Team, is part of City Design Group, and represents the city in the development of OCII Transbay Blocks 8 and 5. 
Maia is Partner Emeritus at Thurlow Small Architecture, a design office begun in 2001 that operates in the local networks of Rhode Island and the global discourse of architecture and landscape urbanism. At TSA, she lead projects for commercial, institutional and municipal clients including the Pawtucket Downtown Design Plan that received awards by the Rhode Island chapters of the AIA, ASLA, and APA.  Prior to her private practice, she worked for Bernard Tschumi Architects in New York and Mark Cavagnero Associates in San Francisco. 
Maia completed her Master of Architecture at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in 1999 where she received the Henry J. Adams AIA Medal.  She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture with Highest Honors at the University of California, Berkeley in 1994. She served on the board of the Rhode Island Chapter of the AIA from 2010 to 2011 and is currently on the Advisory Council of the Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation. She has also taught architecture at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the University of Tennessee.