Liz Ogbu
Nonfiction
Oakland, CA
A globally recognized expert in the field of spatial justice, Liz Ogbu brings her training in architecture to racial justice and grief work, designing community-based solutions to heal landscapes of unattended grief. From transforming a low-income housing development on the grounds of a former plantation in Charlottesville, Virginia to reimagining struggling public spaces navigating the post-Apartheid landscape of Durban, South Africa, Liz is a trailblazer in the concepts of place-based grief and repair. She is Founder and Principal of Studio O, a multidisciplinary design practice working at the intersection of racial and spatial justice.
Liz has also had a long commitment to bringing social impact work into the classroom. She has been on faculty at UC Berkeley, Stanford’s d.school, California College of the Arts, the University of Virginia, and Design Futures (a national university consortium program focused on social equity and community impact). Liz has also been a scholar-in-residence at multiple institutions, including the Maryland Institute College of Art, California College of the Arts, Tulane University, and the Australian Institute of Architects. Most recently, she served as an inaugural University Fellow at the University of Virginia.
A frequently sought-after speaker, Liz has spoken at events around the world, including the Aspen Ideas Festival, Congress of the International Union of Architects, the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, and TEDWomen. Her TED and TEDx Talks, which share a creative practice and life rooted in community wisdom and healing, have been viewed well over a million times.
Liz’s work has been profiled in The New York Times, Fast Company, National Public Radio, the BBC, and elsewhere. Her projects have been featured in museum exhibitions and received many design awards globally. She has also written essays for outlets such as US News and World Reports and several anthologies, including the essay “Making Space for Grief” in EMPATHIC DESIGN (Island Press, 2024). Liz is currently working on a narrative nonfiction book as part of a larger initiative to build collective knowledge about place-based grief and the capacity to heal it. To date, the work has been supported by a Changemaker Authors fellowship, Rockefeller Bellagio Center residency, Graham Foundation grant, and Manzanita Fellowship for Racial, Economic, and Environmental Justice fellowship at Mesa Refuge.
Liz earned her Bachelor of Arts in architecture from Wellesley College and Master of Architecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. In 2025, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design awarded Liz an honorary doctorate in recognition of her contributions to the design field.
The child of Nigerian immigrants, she is based in Oakland, Ca on the traditional unceded lands of the Chechenyo speaking Ohlone.