Kelley Gulley
Master of Business Administration, 1996
Kelley Gulley was midway through her master’s program at University of Phoenix when her three-year-old daughter Ericka was diagnosed with cancer. About nine months later, Ericka passed away. Rather than letting the tragedy derail her goal of earning her degree, Kelley decided that returning to school was the first step in her healing process. She has since completed her degree and embarked on a mission to promote community empowerment and social change.
After her family tragedy, Kelley was able to resume her program without missing a beat because of the flexibility that University of Phoenix offers. “I didn’t lose anything after a year off,” she says. “The school understood and plugged me right back into the program.”
Before she started her master’s program, Kelley was on track to pursue a medical career then switched her focus to the banking industry. Yet, what she couldn’t ignore was her passion for helping people. Her father talked her into pursuing her passion and she took a job with a community development group she had volunteered for. She was later promoted to vice president of the group. She spent the next decade as a consultant to non-profit organizations helping them to operate in the most effective ways possible.
Kelley is now the president and CEO of the Oakland, California-based National Community Development Initiative, a $5 million non-profit consulting firm whose mission is to build capacity for social change in communities of color using culturally-based approaches.
She has been married for more than 20 years to her high school sweetheart and has two children. She considers it her responsibility to share her journey with others and is working on a book about her daughter Ericka’s life.
