Faculty & Staff
John H. Kelly
Ambassador
Ambassador-in-Residence
Since 1994, Ambassador John H. Kelly has operated his own international consulting firm assisting US firms with overseas strategies and marketing. He is active in business in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. From 1995 to 1999 he was also Managing Director of IEP Advisors, am international consulting firm with offices in Washington D.C. and New Dehli, India.
Kelly was U.S. Ambassador in Beirut from 1986 to 1988 during the war years. He was Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East and South Asia from 1989 to 1991, during the Gulf War and up to the Madrid Middle East Peace Conference. He served as American Ambassador in Helsinki, Finland, from 1991 to 1994.
A career diplomat, John Kelly was four times a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and also served in the Department of Defense as well as overseas assignments in Turkey, Thailand, France Lebanon, and Finland.
Kelly is on the Boards of the Lebanese American University and the Finnish-American Chamber of Commerce of the Southeast. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American-Turkish Council, the Middle East Institute, and the Southern Center for International Studies. He is listed in the Who's Who.
Ambassador Kelly has testified more than 20 times before the US Congress. He appears on television and radio, including "Meet the Press", the "Today Show", CNN, C-Span, BBC, and other media. His monograph "Lebanon, 1982 - 1984" was published in English and Russian by the RAND Corporation in U.S. and Russian Policymaking With Respect to the Use of Force, Santa Monica, 1996. His most recent essays are "NATO Expansion: Time for Prudence" in European Enlargement: Global Issues, to be published be the International Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo in 1999; and "Lebanon and the Future of the Peace Process" to be published by the Villanova University Press in Lebanon in the Twenty-first Century.
Married with two children, Kelly was raised in Atlanta and attended Marist School, Emory University, and the Armed Forces Staff College. During the academic year 1981-82 he was Una Chapman Cox Fellow and Diplomatic Associate at Georgetown University, publishing articles on French defense and international terrorism. He speaks French and Thai.