Biography
Carol Coletta is a Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellow at the Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins University. Coletta has deep experience driving impactful public-private partnerships, leveraging networks of civic assets, and fostering the prosperity of communities and individuals across the United States.
In 2025, Coletta received the Urban Land Institute’s ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development, a prestigious honor in the land use and development community, recognizing her lifelong commitment to shaping inclusive, vibrant, and equitable cities through innovative public spaces and civic partnerships.
Coletta has spent a lifetime focused on public space and its impact on cities.
As CEO of Memphis River Parks Partnership, she led the creation of a new riverfront public space concept and the award-winning Tom Lee Park. As Senior Fellow at Kresge Foundation, she led the foundation’s national initiative, Reimagining the Civic Commons, a multi-funder 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. Coletta has previously served as Vice President of Community and National Initiatives for the Knight Foundation, led the start-up of ArtPlace, was president/CEO of CEOs for Cities, and led the Mayors’ Institute on City Design. For almost a decade, Coletta created and hosted the nationally syndicated public radio show, “Smart City.”
Named one of the top 100 urbanists by Planetizen in 2017 and 2023, Coletta was one of just 21 women on the most recent list. She holds a Bachelor of Liberal Studies from the University of Memphis, where she designed a major in Public Issues Management, and completed graduate coursework at the Institute of Design in Chicago and the University of Houston at Clear Lake.