Rebecca Kelley
Rebecca Kelley works with a creative team of youth and community development innovators at the Community Services YMCA. Engaging others for youth, Rebecca braves the challenges of agency collaboration to chase her dream of a seamless web of support for all youth and families. Although an active advocate for systemic change, Rebecca relishes the daily lessons from her role in implementing academic enrichment, tutoring, youth civic engagement, and afterschool arts programming.
Her collaborative strategy and grant-writing results drove the ascent of CincyAfterSchool recognition from its genesis in 2004 to a leading position in the national afterschool movement. Raising over $30 million for youth, she’s been affectionately called “the baddest grantwriter in Cincinnati” by Ozie Davis III.
As a Service Learning Mentor and Pew Civic Engagement Fellow for YMCA of the USA, Rebecca lent her writing and research skills to two national publications. Called upon to share youth and community development secrets, she’s trained over 2,000 individuals via the U.S. Department of Education, Search Institute, YMCA, and others.
She earned a BA in Politics and Public Policy from Goucher College and a law degree from University of Cincinnati College of Law. A member of the inaugural class of c-change, the Cincinnati Business Courier selected Rebecca for the Forty Under 40 Class in 2007.
Collecting Facebook friends as if it were a competitive sport, Rebecca also appreciates Tintin comics, Jane Austen novels, and the soothing sounds of pianist Jim Brickman. Favorite places she’s visited outside the US include the Great Wall of China, the Palace of Versailles, the Scottish Highlands, and the Swiss Alps.
Other than finding an awesome husband and producing two amazing sons, she’s most proud to have provided Congressional testimony supporting the creation of the Corporation for National and Community Service, America’s domestic Peace Corps. A health-seeker, Rebecca also revels at the end of each 30 minutes of cardio and hopes to best her personal record of 25 elliptical miles in a week. Carpe Diem.