Carol Coletta

Carol Coletta has spent a lifetime focused on cities and their success. She served as president and CEO of Memphis River Parks Partnership, a public-private partnership responsible for five miles of public property on the Mississippi River. She led a new riverfront concept plan, the renaming and redesign of two parks with confederate associations, a five-mile bike-ped trail and the design and construction of Tom Lee Park, winning international acclaim for its designers Studio Gang and SCAPE and the Partnership. Built with 44 percent MWBE contractor participation, the park’s new entrance is only six blocks from Tennessee’s poorest Zip code.

She came to the Partnership on loan from The Kresge Foundation, where she was senior fellow in the American Cities Practice. She led the foundation’s initiative, Reimagining the Civic Commons, a national effort to demonstrate that transformative public spaces can connect people of all backgrounds, cultivate trust, create more resilient communities and generate greater value in neighborhoods nearby.

She previously served as VP of community and national Initiatives for the Knight Foundation, a national foundation with deep local roots in 26 U.S. cities. She managed a portfolio of more than $60 million annually in grants and a team of 18 in eight offices across the country to drive success in cities.

Carol led the start-up of ArtPlace, a public-private collaboration to accelerate creative placemaking in communities across the U.S. The collaboration included 13 leading foundations, eight federal agencies and six of the nation’s largest banks.

She served as president/CEO of CEOs for Cities, a Chicago-based network of urban leaders from 45 of the nation’s top metro areas. She also led the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, a collaboration of the National Endowment for the Arts, U.S. Conference of Mayors and American Architectural Foundation to help mayors tackle their thorniest civic design challenges. For more than a decade, Carol created and hosted the nationally syndicated public radio show “Smart City” and continued sharing interviews and insights on cities with regular podcasts.

She continues her research on how public space can launch the connections we urgently need to enable opportunity, equity and trust. Currently she is serving as senior advisor to the High Line Network.