Professor of International Development and Technology Transfer
Tulane University, Payson Center

Eamon M. Kelly, Professor of International Development and Technology Transfer at the Payson Center of Tulane University, is the former Executive Director and one of the founding members of the Center. Kelly is the President Emeritus of Tulane University having served as its president for seventeen years. Kelly was the first social scientist to be elected Chairman of the Board of the National Science Foundation and he is the former Chairman of the Association of American Universities comprised of the sixty leading research universities in the United States and Canada. His current teaching, research and service interests focus on sustainable human development, particularly in Africa.

Kelly was born in New York City and attended Columbia University where he earned the master and Ph.D. degrees in economics. Following graduation from Columbia, he joined the Penn State faculty at University Park, Pennsylvania.

Kelly later served as Special Assistant to the Administrator of the Small Business Administration, where he participated in planning and initiating the federal government’s first minority economic development program. Kelly then joined the Ford Foundation where, among other projects, he developed for Public Broadcasting the nation’s first private domestic satellite system; a by-product of this project was the creation of the National Captioning Institute to provide closed captioning for the hard of hearing.

Kelly also served as Special Advisor to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor. In that position, he successfully directed a government-wide investigation of the Teamster’s $1.4 billion Central States Pension Fund and led negotiations resulting in the Fund being transferred to private management. After leaving the Labor Department, Kelly returned, at the request of the Secretary of Labor, to direct efforts that ended a nationwide coal strike.

Kelly has served on the boards of many professional, philanthropic, civic, and corporate organizations. He is currently Chair of the U. S. China Center for Energy and the Environment, the Geneva-based International Centre for Migration and Health, the International Foundation for Education and Self-Help (created and developed by the Reverend Leon H. Sullivan) and the Counterpart International Advisory Committee. In 1995, he was appointed by President Clinton to serve on the National Science Board, the governing body of the National Science Foundation.  In 1998, Kelly was elected chairman of the National Science Board and re-elected in 2000.   He had been named earlier by the President to the National Security Education Board, which addressed the future national security and economic competitiveness of the U. S. by increasing our national capacity to deal effectively with foreign cultures and languages through scholarships, fellowships and grants.