Dana Gamliel, 30

Growing up, Dana Gamliel knew she was destined for a career in architecture. She was always artistic and was raised in a household of engineers, after all. 

Gamliel has been working for HLW for two and a half years, and has managed projects in the multifamily and adaptive reuse spaces. She also helped the car wash brand Mojo — which says it’s on a mission to redesign the car wash experience — create a customized look to help spread a cohesive message at all its locations. 

For Gamliel, building connections with the clients she works with is a critical component of what she does. 

“I’m really driven by relationships. I like to surround myself with smart, forward-thinking people, and so I applied that to the workplace,” she said. “I started seeing that back at me through the different clients we work with, the project types I was exposed to, and I found a really great place to apply those skills and that part of my personality in project management, as well as managing client accounts, working with other architects and designers, and collaborating with other engineers and consultants.” 

All of those minds and personalities bring different perspectives to a project, she said, which is part of the fun of the job. The result of these minds coming together to see a tangible result of their hard work is something special, she added.

The “pride and joy” of her career so far is the Mojo car wash project, Gamliel said. She got to bring Mojo’s new brand identity to life. She designed an “architectural kit of parts,” which Mojo rolled out across its more than 150 locations. This kit consisted of a mix of elements, including new construction, retrofitting and adaptive reuse. 

“There’s a few of [the car washes] being built right now, and that’s a great feeling,” Gamliel said. “This was also a really long client relationship that I had owned. So I feel very, very connected to them, and connected to their mission and what they’re doing.”