Allie Kelly

Executive Director, The Ray

Allie Kelly is Executive Director of The Ray. In that role, she leads the nonprofit organization that has built the nation’s only publicly accessible, living laboratory for transportation innovation.

Allie was recruited to lead as its first Executive Director in 2015. In three years, she has helped the organization to implement and build almost a dozen ground-breaking, world-leading technology demonstrations, including the first solar road in the United States and the world’s first public demonstration of a drive-through tire safety station. She is also a frequent public speaker and delivered keynote remarks about The Ray from the main stage at transportation, environmental, and technology industry conferences around the world including the U.S Transportation Research Board, AASHTO, VERGE, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, AREDAY and, in 2019, TedX Atlanta, WTS and MOVE. She was the recipient of the 2018 Atlanta Technology Professionals (ATP) Impact Award and was listed as one of the 100 Women to Know by Engineering Georgia in 2018 and 2019.

A Georgia native, Allie earned a B.A. in political science from the University of Georgia. She has over 15 years of experience working in public policy, first as a lobbyist for UPS in Washington, D.C., then returning to Atlanta and founding Georgia Watch, the state’s only consumer watchdog organization.

In 2009, she joined former Lt. Gov. Pierre Howard at the Georgia Conservancy as its senior vice president. Allie and the Trustees of the Ray C. Anderson Foundation partnered with Georgia Tech and the Georgia Conservancy on a “net zero highway” feasibility study for the project that would become The Ray.

Allie lives in Serenbe, near The Ray, with her husband Giff and twin sons Wyatt and Gifford.

Learn more about The Ray here.