Zena Howard stands firmly at the top of the Triangle’s Black architecture community. The late Phil Freelon recruited her to join his Durham-based firm in 2003. He was committed to making good design accessible to everyone. “I thought it was a great firm doing the type of work I like to do,” said Howard, a 1988 graduate of UVA’s School of Architecture. “I thought by joining them, I could take it even further and contribute and grow what they’d started and take it to another level.”