Although architect Sharon Davis?s office is in New York City, she spends much of her time thinking about the rest of the world. One recent afternoon, she prepared a presentation for the World Architecture Festival in Berlin, where she is a finalist for her design of the Bayalpata Regional Hospital, in a remote region of Nepal. Her latest project?the one she?s most excited about?is a design for a K-12 school in Ethiopia. Davis?s firm, Sharon Davis Design, focuses on creating buildings that grapple with issues of social justice, economic empowerment, and sustainability?and ironically, that means she tends to work far afield. "I don?t even know what?d it be like to work for a New York developer," she admits, a bit sheepishly.
Davis?s path to establishing her own practice in 2007 was not at all planned. She moved to New York in 1982 to pursue art but ended up in business school, then spent a decade working for a mutual fund company before taking a leave of absence after she had her fourth child at age 39.
"I took two years off, but I have never been a good stay-at-home mom," Davis says. Not wanting to return to her old job, she had a self-described midlife crisis and hired a career counselor to help her through it.
Work with her career counselor pointed to one profession: architecture. "I knew I?d have to go back to school," says Davis. "I told my career counselor, ?I?ll be 45 by the time I finish!? She told me, You?ll b...