Olivia Jia

Olivia Jia joined the Metropolitan Planning Council in October 2019 as a Marketing Consultant to support the Marketing and Communications team with content creation, graphic design, copy-editing, and social media management.

Olivia comes from an editorial, design, and research background, having served as the Editor-in-Chief for MODA, a student-run design publication at the University of Chicago, an Editorial Intern for ArchDaily, an architecture news site, as well as a Research Assistant within UChicago’s Division for the Social Sciences. She has worked as a marketing consultant for architecture and urban design firm Farr Associates and currently volunteers for Chicago Women in Architecture, a non-profit that supports women in design professions.

A recent honors graduate from UChicago, Olivia double majored in Sociology and Environmental & Urban Studies. Her senior thesis, which was awarded the Chicago Studies Research Prize, utilized Chicago’s Chinatown neighborhood as a case study for investigating the ways in which the built environment can inform a sense of community and identity, from the level of street block to building.

Olivia grew up in Washington, D.C. and just moved to Lakeview after four years of calling Hyde Park home. In her free time, she likes exploring new neighborhoods and shooting film photography!