About Kelley
Kelley Has Spent Four Decades Creating Access to Opportunity
Long before Kelley Cornish became a CEO, Fortune 500 executive or board leader, she was learning one of the lessons that would eventually define her career: Potential matters. But access changes what becomes possible.
Over nearly four decades, Kelley has built a career spanning financial services, healthcare, human capital, organizational leadership, philanthropy and community transformation. Different industries. Different titles. Different seasons. But one consistent purpose: creating environments where people have the opportunity to become more.
From Corporate America to Purpose-Driven Leadership
Kelley’s executive career has taken her inside some of America’s most complex organizations. At Wells Fargo & Company, she served as Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer, helping lead strategy, planning, and enterprise accountability.
Previously, Kelley served as Global Head of Diversity and Inclusion for TD Bank Group and held leadership roles with AmeriHealth Caritas and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Those experiences gave her a front-row seat to the relationship between people and performance—and reinforced a conviction she carries today: Human potential is one of an organization’s greatest assets
A New Chapter of Impact
Today, Kelley serves as President and CEO of the T.D. Jakes Foundation, where she leads work focused on expanding opportunity through financial inclusion, educational access, workforce readiness and community transformation.
Her work brings together corporations, philanthropists, educators, community organizations and leaders who share a belief that opportunity should not be determined by where someone starts. For Kelley, this is about building pathways that allow people to develop skills, create economic mobility, build ownership and ultimately change what is possible for the generation that follows.
Leadership in the Boardroom
Kelley serves as Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Wiley University, becoming the first woman in the university’s more than 150-year history to hold the role. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the Dallas Regional Chamber.
Her governance perspective is informed by decades of enterprise leadership and a belief that strong institutions require boards willing to think simultaneously about performance, people, and long-term impact.
The Person Behind
the Titles
Kelley’s story isn’t simply about climbing. It’s also about becoming. Her career has included accomplishment, reinvention, difficult decisions, unexpected transitions and moments that required her to redefine what success meant.
She believes leadership should create opportunity. Success should create choices. Influence should create access. And achievement becomes most meaningful when it creates possibility for someone beyond ourselves.
