Who We Are

Kelly has served as Director of Programs and Evaluation at Marguerite Casey Foundation, which invests up to $30 million annually in organizations working to strengthen the voice and capacity of low-income families and as Grants Director at the Vanguard Public Foundation where she designed, launched and managed three new grantmaking programs. She was Director of Marketing and Industry Relations at OpNet, an innovative nonprofit that created digital workforce opportunities for low-income young adults.  She also served as Administrative Director for TransAfrica, a national foreign policy organization at the forefront of efforts to secure a peaceful transition to a multi-racial democracy in South Africa and helped coordinate Nelson Mandela’s inaugural visit to the United States.

Kelly has lived and studied in Nairobi, Kenya where she conducted outreach, due diligence and fundraising to build and expand Kenya Women Finance Trust, one of the continent’s first micro-loan funds for women. She has served on the Executive Committee and as Executive Director of Bay Area Blacks in Philanthropy, on the board of the Funding Exchange and is currently on the board of the Center for Community Change. She has an M.B.A from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, a BA in Sociology from UC Santa Barbara and was a Sloan Foundation Fellow at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Chicago, researching the intersection between leadership, organizational networks and contemporary social movements.