Building childhood dreams into reality

By Molly Randhawa

For Bryanna MacDonald, MBA '21, The Sims, a popular PC game from the 2000’s, wasn’t just a game—it was a playground of possibility. At seven years old, she was already a budding architect. Shaping homes for made-up characters, sculpting their worlds and experimenting with environments where space wasn’t just functional, but could make a person feel something—comfort, joy or even chaos.

What started as playful clicks and drag-and-drop actions soon sparked something deeper: a fascination with how spaces could shape lives. It wasn’t about the buildings, but the people inside them. And it didn’t take long for Bryanna to realize that this virtual experiment in The Sims was an early education in architecture, well-being and sustainability.

Today, as a senior sustainability consultant with architecture and engineering firm HDR, working out of the Victoria office and supporting Western Canada, Bryanna is no longer building homes for pixelated people. She assists in creating environments and strategies that promote health and well-being by integrating these elements into everyday work, while also advancing sustainability in both projects and company operations—ensuring that every design decision aligns with sustainable practices. 

The unexpected architect

Bryanna’s career didn’t exactly unfold like she imagined in her childhood simulations. After a few short years of supporting architecture projects in the traditional way, she traded drafting tables, blueprints, and sketching futuristic cities for drafting proposals and contracts for the provincial government. But even in this role, the same spark that ignited her childhood love for design remained. Every contract and every proposal were a chance to influence the bigger picture.

“I wasn’t really doing what one would have traditionally thought an architect would do,” she admits. “What I loved was problem-solving, and the idea that ‘If I do X, it will influence Y in this way.’” For Bryanna, architecture wasn’t just about buildings—it was about how design shapes the way people interact with space and experience life.

When her managing director suggested she go back to school for a master's degree in architecture, Bryanna hesitated. “I looked around at the architects and thought, ‘I love architecture, but my passion extends beyond that,” she says. But she did want to grow her career—whether it was in architecture or not, she had decided she needed to go back to school, eventually pursuing UVic’s MBA in Sustainable Innovation.

“I ended up calling it my COVID project,” she says of the timing of her MBA at Gustavson, which she started during the pandemic. “Even despite that, it was a really good fit.”

Building for the future

What drew Bryanna to architecture was its hidden power—the ability to impact not just physical spaces, but the people who inhabited them. “When we talked about sustainability in architecture, it was almost exclusively about the environmental impacts and less about the social piece,” she says.

Bryanna was drawn to the intersection of holistic sustainability and architecture through civic design—public spaces like libraries, recreation centers, and parks—‘third spaces’ that shape how people connect with their communities outside of home and work, and how these spaces influence how people feel, what they do and the impacts they leave on communities. "It touched the public in ways that other types of architecture didn’t,” Bryanna explains. “For me, it was always about the tangible social impact—the way design could bring people together and enhance their lives.”

That philosophy came full circle when she started a company-wide wellness newsletter, which only progressed further after HDR acquired the firm. “When the firm I originally started working for, CEI, was acquired by HDR, I kind of just jumped on the opportunity to be able to bring that social piece into my day-to-day,” she says. “It wasn’t always coming up in the plans that we were drawing, so it was a way to tie it in.”

When HDR acquired CEI just a few months into Bryanna’s role, she embraced the opportunity to grow the initiative. Over time, she expanded the newsletter into broader health and well-being programming across HDR’s Canadian offices—coordinating cross-office challenges, sparking conversations through weekly emails and championing both mental and physical health as key to sustainable work culture.

This engagement—and Bryanna’s passion for social well-being—was well underway long before she pursued her MBA. In fact, her early efforts helped shape a culture of care that continues to influence how her team works today. Through her work, Bryanna continues to show that sustainability isn’t just about buildings—it’s about the people inside them, too.

A career in sustainability, accelerated

As her career has accelerated since completing her MBA, Bryanna works closely with HDR’s Sustainability Director and Sustainability Projects Director, balancing both corporate and project sustainability. She often navigates evolving laws and compliance issues.

“I’ve never had to pay more attention to global politics in my life,” she says. “For example, navigating different political landscapes, while avoiding greenwashing and green hushing, is a huge part of my role.” With the global political landscape becoming more complex, she anticipates this will continue to be a focus in her role. “I imagine it’s only going to get more complicated. But it makes every day interesting, to say the least, and gives me an opportunity to exercise empathetic listening and problem solving which has been the common thread throughout my entire career.”

Despite these growing challenges, Bryanna feels more prepared than ever, thanks to her MBA in Sustainable Innovation. “Our team is well-rounded, and I’m really well-equipped to tackle these challenges through my education at UVic and the support of my team. Of course, we pull in experts when needed, but just being able to ask the right questions—even if I don’t know the answer—the MBA has definitely set me up to think more critically.”

Building worlds, one space at a time

Looking ahead, Bryanna is still that same architect at heart—the one who built virtual worlds in The Sims. But now, those worlds are larger, more intricate and impact far more people.

As Bryanna puts it: “Care and concern for well-being is at the root of my passion for social and environmental sustainability, and this spirit is with me in everything I do—whether I’m supporting my team, consulting on a project or strategizing for organizational change. People are the key to solving the biggest challenges we face today, and we must ensure the systems and infrastructure we create empower them and remove the barriers embedded in the status quo.”

Whether she’s guiding global-embedded sustainability efforts or nurturing a workplace culture of care, Bryanna is focused on creating environments that truly matter.

And while the pixels may be gone, the power of good, thoughtful design—its ability to shape lives, change experiences and bring people together—is just as real as ever.