Skidmore College - Scope Magazine Fall 2018

23 SKIDMORE COLLEGE Theo Stroomer Business specialist and generalist D eb Kelly ’68 keeps reinventing herself. A Denver- based corporate affairs expert, she has led a range of firms in such areas as communications, crisis management, marketing and branding, investor relations and strategic planning. Now a partner in Genesis, a consult- ing firm, Kelly has proven more than once that embrac- ing change can bring professional success and personal satisfaction. You just have to be willing to keep learning, she says. Kelly came to Skidmore fromWestchester County to study math, but she switched to a sociology major. After graduation she moved to Boston, “near skiing,” and became an administrative assistant. It was an era “when banks were under pressure to hire women officers,” and she landed jobs at a brokerage firm and a bank. To punch up her skills for that work, she took classes at Northeastern University, and later Lowes Companies lured her to head up investor relations at its North Carolina headquarters. Accurate math was crucial when Kelly was talking to high- level investors about complex capital expenditures and financial allocations. That experience helped convince Quaker Oats to hire Kelly as VP for corporate affairs and investor relations and send her to Harvard’s management program. In 1995, she left the corporate workplace to join Genesis; she also sits on the board of directors of Perdue Farms. Being a consultant, she says, “At first I didn’t like the idea of selling, tracking my time or dealing with agency politics. But now I love that every new client presents a different problem—you have to get creative.” In 2001 Kelly received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Investor Relations magazine and last year won a National Association of Corporate Directors Fellowship with credentials as a “gold-standard director.” She served on the federal Securities and Exchange Commission’s blue-ribbon Advisory Committee on Corporate Disclosure in the late 1970s, as well as the National Investor Rela- tions Institute’s board of directors, including as a past president of its Rocky Mountain chapter. And she’s a giver, especially enjoying her mentoring of young professional women. “I want to teach them to jump in and try some- thing. You have to figure out what you like and don’t like. I want them to be successful.” In the future, she hopes to share her acumen and experience with nonprofits. “Their needs are obvious.” Kelly relaxes by playing Frisbee with her border collies, traveling (a recent trip was to London for the theater), ski- ing and reading, reading, reading. “When I was in college, I didn’t take physics. Now, I find myself listening to books on astrophysics all the time. And I always hated the idea of studying dates, but now I read history. I learned so much from Fascism: AWarning by Madeleine Albright. If I had tried this in college, who knows? I might have ended up in the foreign service.” Bottom line, Kelly advises: “Liberal arts are a great place to start your higher education—the wide exposure to ideas, to experiences, to people. And then you have to trust your instincts.” —Helen S. Edelman ’74 Sociology and math have helped Deb Kelly ’68 succeed as a corporate executive in practically every area of business.