Electrical engineering alumnus elected chairman of American Banking Association

The new chairman of the American Bankers Association is Auburn University graduate Kenneth Kelly, ’90 electrical engineering.

Originally from Eufaula, Kelly worked for Southern Company for 27 years before moving into banking. His time in the energy sector began as a cooperative education student at Alabama Power while he was studying at Auburn and culminated with managing multibillion-dollar investments in energy infrastructure before retiring in 2017.

Kelly is a former chairman of the Auburn Alumni Engineering Council and currently on its executive committee, which assists Dean Mario Eden in leading the college’s research, development and academic efforts.

He’s taken on prominent roles since joining the banking sector and now serves as chairman and CEO of First Independence Bank in Detroit, where he has more than doubled the bank’s assets since taking over, growing the institution’s assets from approximately $250 million in 2020 to more than $600 million today.

After his entry into banking and executing a memorandum of understanding between two trade associations, he joined the board of the American Bankers Association (ABA) and, just a few years later, was voted chairman of the board in late October. He has also served as chairman of the National Bankers Association from 2018-2020.

His election as chairman of the ABA, the largest trade association representing banks of all sizes in the United States, with member assets totaling over $25 trillion, positions him to focus on one of the biggest priorities of his career: finding the next generation of leaders.

“Education, training, and most importantly, opportunity is what we are intending to leave as that legacy regarding emerging leaders,” Kelly said.

At First Independence Bank, he created a next-generation board — a group of talented young community business owners and civic leaders who were literally given a seat at the table with executives. They advise the bank’s leadership on how to make the company more competitive when recruiting talent and customers, and on the flip side, they get leadership experience that is in high demand in the industry.

“We treat them like board members,” Kelly said. “They are an advisory board. We pay them a stipend like a board member.”  This is to increase their board skills and experience when applying for or being approached to serve on a board in the future.

One unexpected benefit of the board is that its members have become some of the company’s “biggest ambassadors in the community,” he said. 

Kelly’s own career shows that it doesn’t take long after graduation to start making a big difference in an industry. Kelly worked as an engineer in power distribution for Alabama Power, eventually moving into industrial accounts in the Birmingham Division.

His career took him to Georgia Power and Southern Power, Southern Company’s independent power producer. He led negotiations of huge investments in solar facilities for Southern Company, building a portfolio totaling approximately $3.4 billion in partnership asset value.

Kelly will serve one year as chairman of the ABA and will serve an additional year on the board as immediate past chair bringing his total leadership on the ABA board to seven years of service.

“I am honored to be able to express our heartfelt congratulations to Kenneth Kelly on becoming chairman of the ABA,” Auburn University President Chris Roberts said in a statement for the ABA. “I find that he’s accomplished this through his brilliance and his commitment to excellence. He couples it with an uncanny ability to work with and motivate others to achieve their very best.”

In addition to cultivating the next generation of leaders, Kelly said cybersecurity is of huge importance to him as chairman of the ABA.

Banks are in an “arms race” with those trying to commit fraud and other financial crimes, he said, and that it’s a problem banks are dealing with every day.

Kelly was inducted into the State of Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame in 2020. Prior to that, he earned the Distinguished Auburn Engineer Award in 2018.