About Carol Coletta and Candelaria Silva-Collins

Carol Coletta is CEO of Memphis River Parks Partnership, leading the relaunch of a nonprofit to develop, manage, and program six miles of riverfront and five park districts along the Mississippi River. Previously, she was a senior fellow at The Kresge Foundation and VP of Community and National Initiatives at Knight Foundation. Carol led the start-up of ArtPlace, a broad collaboration to accelerate creative placemaking and was President and CEO of CEOs for Cities. She also served as Executive Director of the Mayors’ Institute on City Design. 

Candelaria Silva-Collins is an arts consultant, writer, and facilitator who lives in Dorchester, Boston, Massachusetts. She connects community-based groups to the arts and arts and cultural institutions to community-based groups. She is Program Manager for the Fellowes Athenaeum Trust Fund of the Boston Public Library and is coordinator for the Creative Entrepreneur Fellowship of the Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston.  Her work as Director of ACT Roxbury, a cultural economic development organization, was profiled in several publications, including The Creative Communities Builders Handbook. An active member of the cultural community in Boston, she is currently Chair, Designators of the George B. Henderson Foundation and an Advisory Board member of Write on the Dot. She previously served on the boards of Goddard College, Wheelock Family Theatre, Dunamis Boston, Boston Foundation for Architecture, and Discover Roxbury. Candelaria’s children’s stories, fiction, essays, and reviews have been published in local and national publications and she is an active blogger. Her first published children’s book, Stacey Became a Frog One Day, was published in October 2020.  

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