Declan Kelly

Declan Kelly (born 1968) is an Irish-American business executive, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is the founder, Chairman and CEO of The Consello Group, a specialized investing and financial services platform. Kelly is best known as the founder, former chairman and CEO of Teneo, an international consulting company based in New York City. Overview Kelly started his career in the 1980s and 1990s reporting for The Nenagh Guardian, the Tipperary Star, and the Cork Examiner, and in 1994 he received the AT Cross Business Journalist of The Year Award. He afterwards worked in management for Irish communications companies such as FleishmanHillard, and in 1999 he founded his own business, Gallagher and Kelly Public Relations. Selling that firm to Financial Dynamics (FD) in 2000, he subsequently moved to the United States and began consulting for companies such as General Electric, Coca-Cola and Dell. When FD was sold to FTI Consulting for US$340 million, Kelly became FTI's executive vice-president and chief integration officer. In 2007 and 2008 he was a leading adviser to Hillary Clinton during her presidential campaign, and in 2009 Clinton appointed him US Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland. During his two-year tenure he worked closely with Invest NI and on the US-Northern Ireland Investment Conference, and was praised for bringing jobs to Ireland by politicians such as Peter Robinson, Martin McGuinness, and Owen Paterson. In June 2011 Kelly co-founded Teneo Holdings in New York, and the following year Irish Central dubbed Kelly "this Irish generation's Tony O'Reilly" for his work in international business. Kelly has served as an adjunct business professor at the NUI Galway and is involved with a number of non-profit and civic organisations, including the Sesame Workshop, the American Ireland Fund, Cooperation Ireland, and GOAL (USA). Currently serving as chairman of the American Associates of the Royal Academy of Arts, he also founded the Northern Ireland Mentorship Program for business graduates, and has been recognised with accolades such as the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. The American Irish Historical Society selected Kelly as the youngest-ever recipient of their gold medal in 2008, which is given to a person "deemed to have made a unique contribution to Irish American society." Early life and education Declan Kelly was born in 1968 in Portroe, Nenagh, a village on the banks of Lough Derg in the Irish county of Tipperary.