Olga Stella
Executive Director
Detroit Creative Corridor Center
Olga Stella is a seasoned economic development professional who has spent her career focused on the community and economic development of Detroit. Stella leads the Detroit Creative Corridor Center with the mission of strengthening Detroit’s creative industries. Her team serves small businesses and champions the role of design in Detroit’s economy.
She’s applying her background in public policy and coalition-building to a new challenge—activating Detroit’s designation as the only UNESCO City of Design in the United States.
Stella spent the bulk of her career driving strategy and programs at the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation—Detroit’s nonprofit economic development agency.
Detroit City of Design: The Role of Design in Building Detroit’s Future
Detroit is the only US city to earn a City of Design designation from the UNESCO Creative Cities Network among 22 global design cities. This 10-year designation isn’t only a badge of design excellence; it’s also a recognition of how design can help propel a city’s future.
The Detroit Creative Corridor Center pursued this designation because of the impressive economic impacts that other cities within the UNESCO Creative Cities Network have experienced. Olga Stella will speak to the impacts that design can have in growing jobs, improving places and adding to cultural vitality—and the possibilities for how design can build a better Detroit in the next 10 years.
