Ceara O’Leary, AIA, is an architect, planner and educator focused on equitable and resilient neighborhood spaces. She is Founder and Principal of studio CO’ llc, a new collaborative design, planning and research practice. Ceara is also a Professor of Practice at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture + Community Development, teaching public interest design and community development courses. She continues as a faculty partner with the Detroit Collaborative Design Center (DCDC), where she was Co-Executive Director from 2019-2023 and continues to lead collaborative design and planning projects citywide. Her practice, research and teaching lie at the intersection of policy and community resilience. She speaks nationally on community-engaged design and teaching.

Ceara’s current practice, studio CO’, builds upon her experience at DCDC, a multidisciplinary nonprofit design office working with community partners across Detroit who traditionally lack access to design resources. Projects vary in scale from the reactivation of community buildings and pocket parks on formerly vacant land to neighborhood resiliency plans and citywide infrastructure strategies, all rooted in local character, opportunities and challenges. Her work is driven by community engagement and participation in the design process, ensuring that residents and other stakeholders have an active role in the decision-making that impacts their neighborhoods. 

Previously, Ceara worked with the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio in Biloxi, MS and bcWorkshop in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. She was an Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellow with DCDC in 2012-2014 and has degrees from UC Berkeley and Brown University. She hails from California.