Meet April Magill

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful April Magill a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

April , thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

I get my resilience from my collogues across the country who are forging similar paths, from the clients who hire us to fulfill their dreams, and from those who attend our workshops and leave feeling empowered and alive.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

15 years ago, I took a leap of faith and decided to leave the commercial architecture firm I worked for to start my own business, Root Down Designs. My architectural practice was focused on highly sustainable and healthy buildings, including the use of alternative / natural building methods. I also began teaching hands-on building classes and workshops focused on natural building and community empowerment; this educational piece led me to found a 501c3 non-profit organization in 2023, called the Root Down Building Collective, who’s mission is to ‘Advance Climate-Smart and Equitable Housing Solutions.’ This year, we will focus our efforts on providing women-centered and women-led building classes. In 2022, I also created the Root Down House Plan Co. in order to make high-quality, sustainable house plans more accessible to more people at a fraction of the cost of custom designs. We are very excited about our ‘Healthy Homes E-Catalog’ we’ve developed which can be purchased right from our website, and the Hempcrete House plans we have launched!

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

1. When starting out, work for people smarter than you to learn the basic skills; and to learn about what you like and don’t like.
2. Surround yourself with those who will support you and your work.
3. Be adaptable. When something is not working, it may be time to pivot.

Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?

Take a breather.
Take a day off. 1 day, or a half of a day out of the office will not kill anyone or the company.
For me, I go surfing or find some water somewhere; water makes me feel calm.
Find that friend or colleague and be honest; be vulnerable; open up about what you are struggling through b/c chances are, they have too. Its helpful to share.

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