Pamela Iriarte Noya, 28

Between the summer of her junior and senior years of high school, Pamela Iriarte Noya started calling architecture and design firms.

She lived in a small town in Georgia — having been born in Bolivia and grown up in Miami — and decided to ask the local architects if they needed help around the office from a cheap (read: free) and eager student. “Architects really like to deter students,” Noya said. “They tell you about the exams, and the five years of schooling, and the internships.” In Noya’s case, they didn’t even get as far as issuing the warning. Nobody was interested. So she set her sights higher and began calling firms in Atlanta.

“One firm said, ‘Sure, come on in a few days a week,’ ” Noya said. She would bus to Atlanta two or three days a week and soak in what she could. When it was time for college, she went to the Pratt Institute’s five-year architecture program.

With that kind of patience and dedication, it’s no wonder she wound up as an architect at STV, and within six months was promoted to associate architect.

Since coming to STV, she has designed the flood protection for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s maintenance yards, produced the schematics for the Baltimore Therapeutic Treatment Center (price tag: $817 million), and led the design improvements on 12,000 square feet of the front-facing customer service space at Moynihan Train Hall, adding more seating and increasing the efficiency of the staff areas.

“We were able to use VR technology,” Noya said. “We have a visualization team. I really worked closely with them to create these options.”

Most recently, Noya has been working with the Massachusetts School Building Authority to assess the condition of some 1,580 schools in the state and make mechanical, structural, electrical and architectural recommendations.

As for the future? “I would love to design spaces for communities — libraries, museums,” the Astoria, Queens, resident said. “I like a good building where the public is invited to come in.”