Maria Palencia: Taking the unexpected path

If she had, she’d likely be a doctor back in her home country of Spain. Instead, she’s helping deliver one of the largest and most technically complex projects being built in the country as project technical director for Mayo Clinic’s “Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester” campus transformation in Rochester, Minnesota, designed alongside Foster + Partners. That unexpected path has taken her from Spain to New York to Chicago, where she lives today with her husband and children, and shaped a life rooted in trusting her instincts, embracing complexity and taking big leaps. As part of CannonDesign’s My Voice series, explore Maria’s story in her own words...

I grew up in Valencia, Spain, and my parents wanted to give my brother and me every opportunity to become fluent in English, so they enrolled us in the American School of Valencia. Every summer growing up, my brother and I traveled to the States for summer camp. 

I cried for three days straight when I left for camp the first time, but after that, I only cried again when I had to leave.

I consider myself very independent, but I thrive most when I’m around other people. This includes my family, my friends and my peers. Even though many of my loved ones live in Spain, my husband and I created our beautiful family here in Chicago with our 8-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son. I still FaceTime my mom every day. 

My dad sadly passed away last summer, and I was very close with him, too. I had a wide-open line of communication with him and enjoyed sharing little details of everyday life. I cherish that we remained so close even though I lived on another continent for almost 20 years. 

I know how to communicate. I know how to look at a challenge and move toward solutions instead of spiraling around a problem. 

Someone once told me, “You’re only as good as your team.” That always stayed with me. You can have all the processes in the world, but if the team isn’t working well together, the rest of it won’t work out. 

What I love most about the Mayo Clinic project is that it demands a high-performing team made up of people with all different backgrounds and expertise. Our success is directly tied to trust, collaboration and ownership. CannonDesign’s Mayo Clinic team consists of over 300 people, and we’re still growing. 

Nobody is expected to know everything.

I actually started out in medical school. It was almost expected that my brother or I would become a doctor because both my parents were doctors. It was an obvious path, but it wasn’t for me. 

I always loved drawing my childhood home. We had the original architectural plans, and I used to spend hours redrawing and tracing over them. I thought, “Well, why not architecture? Why not try this?” So that’s what I did, and I stuck with it. 

After school, I pushed myself to take a job across the world at a façade consulting firm in New York City. That early job grounded me in how buildings come together...materials, systems, constraints, all of it. I was climbing scaffolding, seeing the city up close and understanding design in a more real and technical way.

My husband and I went to elementary school together in Spain, but hadn’t seen each other in years. We reconnected at a class reunion just weeks before I moved to New York permanently, and we just kept finding reasons to meet. 

After a few years of going back and forth from the U.S. to Spain to see each other, we decided to get married and build a life in Chicago. Honestly, my husband took the biggest leap of all, moving here and rebuilding his career as a journalist. He now collaborates with different media and leads civic engagement efforts at a policy and advocacy nonprofit. His support and generosity have made my career possible. 

I spent more than a decade at another large architecture firm in Chicago, and I really loved it. By 2024, I remember thinking, “I can stay here for another 14 years, but if I wait another 14 years, I’ll also be 14 years older. This might be the moment for a change."

I remember the day I met Christy Cavataio, client lead and senior project director of the Mayo Clinic project. She and I had a two-hour dinner conversation about the project technical director role. There was something very honest about the conversation. There were no secrets. And I couldn't wait to start. 

This is a breakthrough project. We’re testing new ways of working around document control, construction administration and BIM workflows, and thinking about how those practices can be applied to other projects at different scales. It’s a great opportunity to give something back to the firm.

I love city life. Our favorite family weekend activity is visiting the Lincoln Park farmer’s market. I love the energy of being around people, the sounds of traffic and the feeling that there’s always something happening. 

I love to walk.

I love Chicago’s relationship between the urban environment and the water. It reminds me of where I grew up near the Mediterranean. 

Every big decision I’ve made involved leaving something behind. From leaving for summer camp, to leaving medical school, to leaving Spain, to leaving New York, to leaving an established career to join the Mayo Clinic project. 

But I don’t think of those things as losses.  

My dad always used to tell me, “You’re not signing anything.” He’d remind me that I could always come back, and that every step I took was about giving myself more opportunities to make my own decisions and forge my own path.  

 I would tell someone that if they were thinking about making a change, take the leap. 

The fear of losing something can keep you from moving forward, but I’ve always tried to look at those moments as opportunities to keep growing.