Kelsey Zlevor

(she/her)

Kelsey Zlevor is a spatial strategist, design researcher, and cultural worker at the convergence of planning, climate justice, and social change. She is a Senior Associate at Muse, a Chicago-based women-owned planning firm. A committed creative, Kelsey developed the Strategic Yes for Social Change Retreat Toolkit in 2021, a package of tools arranged to guide individual strategic planning retreats to align our whole selves in our professional path towards social good. She is also the keeper of Mental Landscapes, an on-going body of independent trauma-informed design research and scholarship that centers depression and psychological disability in public space design. Kelsey is a board member of the Association for Community Design, a national non-profit dedicated to a practice of design that dismantles systemic injustice in the built environment, and was named the fall 2023 Artist in Residence at Allerton Park and Retreat Center in central Illinois. She holds a Master’s in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Oregon, and a B.A. in Environmental Science from the University of Iowa.

Fun Facts

• Cellist in the Chicago City-wide Symphony Orchestra.
• Was a community parks planner in Oregon for six years (yes, she has seen all of Parks and Rec, twice).
• Proud plant parent and transported her fiddle leaf fig across the country, which is now 7-feet tall.