Margarita McGrath, AIA, is co-founder of noroof, a Brooklyn-based architecture practice, and an Associate Professor at Virginia Tech. Her work operates between design, teaching, and research, with a focus on housing, adaptive reuse, and civic infrastructure. She develops models of experience-based education that connect academic and professional environments, emphasizing tacit learning, access, and the evolving structure of practice.

She directs the W_Internship, a program that stages an early, low-barrier first job in the profession. Positioned at mid-degree, this paid, short, high-intensity experience foregrounds tacit learning while offering firms a model for how professional knowledge is observed, shared, and carried forward in contemporary practices. Now in its fifth year, the program has placed dozens of students in firms nationwide and has been presented at ACSA and featured in Times Higher Education.