Creative Cities Topic of Campus Presentation

Students, faculty and staff are invited to participate in an interactive discussion with Carol Coletta, president of Coletta & Company. She has been pioneering innovative strategies to improve cities since 1974. Her free presentation is scheduled from 9-10 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 20, in 102 Jamrich Hall. She will also speak to the Economic Club of Marquette County the previous evening.

Coletta will address the qualities that make a city appealing to people who want to live and work there, and how to turn ideas for developing creative cities into a reality.

As one of the first urban pioneers to move into a loft in downtown Memphis – where she still lives today – it is evident that her commitment is more than professional … it’s personal.

Her firm Coletta & Company anticipates trends and develops action-oriented public policy. She conceived and wrote the Talent Magnet Report, the first city blueprint aimed at attracting and retaining the creative class. She also co-authored Cultural Development in Creative Communities for Americans for the Arts.

Her award-winning public radio program, Smart City, showcases her provocative interviews with the world’s smartest thinkers on urban life and opportunities for cities. Coletta also produces and hosts the FedEx Marketing Millennium series, a monthly videoconference with leading business thinkers.

She has experience as a small business owner, owner of her own advertising and marketing company, and senior vice-president of First Tennessee Bank, where she organized the Memphis Jobs Conference, which set the city’s economic development agenda for 20 years.

Coletta is a University of Miami School of Architecture Knight Fellow in community building and a master’s candidate in future studies at the University of Houston Clear Lake. Her paper on the future of cities was selected for presentation to the World Future Society annual meeting in 2003.

For more information, contact Evelyn Massaro (WNMU-FM) at 227-2633.