But Wiggins did more with her career than pay her bills. She shaped high-profile corporate and foundation spaces with a minimalist client-centered design philosophy while mentoring rising design professionals and pushing for greater diversity access to the field. With many recognitions, her influence grew. In 2020, Wiggins won Interior Design’s Best Interior Designer: Corporate Interiors. She was also named in 2021 to the International Interior Design Association’s College of Fellows and in 2022 was inducted into Interior Design’s Hall of Fame. “As an industry, we are all better because of Mavis,” says Cheryl Durst, executive vice president and CEO of the International Interior Design Association. “She is a shaper of place—and of people—a gifted designer, consummate storyteller and the most gentle and serene of human souls.”

Breaking In

Wiggins was initially outside her comfort zone when she embarked on tenant improvements. Eventually, she “fell in love with it when I realized what you could do with space,” she says, “and how you could affect space.”

Wiggins’ first job out of college was with Environment Planning, a small firm run by Archibald Kaplan in New York City in the mid-1970s. At a time when “everything was hand drawing,” she says, she drafted test-fit plans for real estate clients and brokers, learning the precision of square footages and layouts.

After one year, Wiggins joined HOK’s New York City office, where she worked on early assignments, including one for Marriott Corp. in Bethesda, Md., under senior designers. It was not long before she embarked on a solo mission to Portland, Ore., to work with an insurance company. Stints with designer Stanley Felderman and later with larger firms such as KPF, HLW and Gensler followed.

But as a young Black woman entering the profession in the 1970s, navigating openly hostile jobsites—sometimes tarnished with racist graffiti—was challenging. “When I’d arrive, all of a sudden, everything would just get really quiet,” she says.

Wiggins still insisted on visiting sites to answer questions. That, along with her attention to detail, won the respect of colleagues. “I learned how to keep my head up and keep moving,” she says. “You had to have a pretty thick skin to get through some of those early projects.”

As she built a portfolio and gained more responsibility, attitudes shifted. “When the principals of the firm recognize you and allow you to have these opportunities,” Wiggins says, “then that sort of breaks down some of the barriers … not all, but to some degree.”

As Wiggins rose into senior design roles—particularly in the mid-1990s at HLW—she honed a distinctive approach grounded in simplicity and purpose—a style seeded by studies at Pratt under Joe D’Urso, a noted interior designer and design professor who developed her eye for eliminating what she calls “arbitrary embellishment.”

For Wiggins, every move in a space must have a reason. “I like to make it clean and clear, and I want to make sure that any spaces that are created in there are things that the company really needs to grow as a firm and [that] it’s useful to their staff,” she says.

For a Rockefeller Foundation project in the mid-1990s, Wiggins met with scientists and staff working in the burgeoning biotechnology and sustainability fields. She wanted the environment to reflect their mission. Glass-front offices were still rare, so Wiggins designed 5-ft-wide barn doors that could remain open most of the time, bringing daylight from private offices into open work areas. Clerestory windows above the doors extended the light deeper into the floor. Each barn door, framed in wood, was inlaid with reclaimed architectural copper she scavenged from scrap yards. “It was all gnarly and bent up,” she says, but once flattened and installed, “each door was unique because of it.”

HBO’s Santa Monica, Calif., headquarters—developed in the late 1990s while she was at HLW—proved to be another challenge. The five-story project featured atrium spaces and bridges that connected executives and staff. Along two floors, she had 50-ft-long corridors to resolve. After noticing a New York City sidewalk where people had carved graffiti into the concrete, she proposed a similar concrete floor that HBO employees could mark themselves “to engage the staff,” she says. Human resource staff observers were on hand “just to make sure nobody was misbehaving,” says Wiggins, but the result was “a really cool way to introduce that space.”

At TPG, Wiggins completed the clean, bright and well-detailed New York City headquarters of DZ Bank in 2022.
Photo by Eric Laignel, courtesy TPG Architecture

Leading by Listening

In 2010, Wiggins joined TPG Architecture, where she later completed notable projects such as the DZ Bank New York City headquarters. TPG’s full architectural and interior design efforts relocated the German bank to a bright and well-detailed space at the One Vanderbilt tower.

Wiggins also honed her mentorship and leadership skills at TPG. Younger staff appreciate that she “gently steers them,” she says. When she became a design director, Wiggins worked to keep that reciprocity intact. “It’s top down, bottom up, you learn from each other,” she says. “That’s going to give you the best end result.”

Ricardo Nabholz, TPG managing associate and studio creative director worked on more than 30 projects with Wiggins. He called her an exceptional designer, listener and communicator. “She has an uncanny ability to quickly get to the heart of what a client or project truly needs,” he says, “and then bring both the client and the team along on that journey of understanding.”

Wiggins, who retired in January 2025, still speaks with design students and emerging professionals, whom she encourages to be curious and collaborative. She hopes to focus more on youth from disadvantaged neighborhoods who might otherwise not be exposed to design as a career path. She continues to consult with TPG, including on a Chicago office project for client Citadel LLC, the investment management firm. Wiggins also serves on Pratt’s advisory board. “I don’t believe creatives ever retire from their passion. However, that passion may morph or develop in other ways,” she says. “I fully intend to keep my foot on the pedal by exposing young people to the industry of design and architecture.”