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Maura Kelly: media master

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By Harry Keaney

When the Irish Business Organization hosts its fourth annual trade show in New York on May 19, Maura Kelly will be among its sharpest and most critical observers. That’s because the Kerry native is not only chairperson of the IBO subcommittee organizing the event, she’s also, in many ways, the personification of the theme of this year’s show — successful Irish and Irish American working women.

As an award-winning senior producer and marketing manger with the television station Thirteen/WNET, Kelly knows plenty about putting on a show. Asked how she would gauge the success of this year’s event, she responded: “It depends on the number of people who attends on the night. We will know it’s a success if we have made a connection with the community.”

She described the show’s photo exhibit on working women, entitled “A Prayer for my Daughter,” from the Yeats poem of the same title, as a monument to the women who came to the U.S. since the Famine. “We will show milestones in women’s work history,” she said. “There will be 22 to 24 well selected pictures. It will not be comprehensive; it will be sampling.”

Kelly said the special panel discussion on working women, entitled “The Celtic Tigress,” will be a success if it develops into a real conversation that is “meaningful, insightful, candid and, most of all, inspiring.”

While Irish women have ascended from the scullery rooms to the board rooms, Kelly has, in her 30-odd years, experienced a meteoric climb toward the top echelons of what is a ruthlessly competitive business. Last Sunday, she was presented with a New York Emmy Award in the outstanding educational programming category for creating and producing the three-part multimedia series “The Internet in Action.”

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With more than 15 years experience in every facet of television and marketing communications, including a master’s degree in communication arts, her professional credits range from education and public affairs programming to commercial and live broadcast special events. As senior producer, she also develops, produces and manages distribution for a variety of multimedia programs.

She was co-developer and lead producer on the award-wining “Ethical Choices” television series for teenagers, which was distributed through PBS and to high schools nationwide.

Kelly also served as senior producer of the award-wining “Power of the Spirit,” a one-hour PBS documentary celebrating personal triumph over addiction which was broadcast by more than 100 public television stations.

In 1968, when she was 7, Kelly, the youngest in a family of four, left Killarney. Her father, Patrick, was in the haberdashery business, but, like countless other emigrants, he felt there were better opportunities across the Atlantic.

“Coming to the U.S. was a mixture of excitement and ambivalence,” Kelly recalled. “Everyone said, ‘You will have plenty of toys.’ I was also told you couldn’t go out alone. I remember the day leaving, and all the neighbors in Killarney out on the road to send us off.”

The family settled in Holy Spirit Parish in the Bronx, where Maura attended elementary school and, subsequently, St. Thomas Aquinas High School. While attending Lehman College, from which she graduated in 1984 with a degree in psychology and economics, the idea of working in the media began to surface.

“I was working in a restaurant on Second Avenue called the Green Derby and I became friendly with a media consultant the UN,” she said. The consultant, Chris Van San, offered her a job on Saturdays in the public information office of UNICEF, the United Nations international relief agency for mothers and children.

“That opened my eyes to a world of possibilities to use the media in a very effective way, to educate and to train,” Kelly said.

Another major influence in her life was the well-known Irish television personality Fred O’Donovan. During a year studying at Maynooth College, in Ireland, Kelly became friendly with O’Donovan’s daughter Fiona.

“He was very creative,” Kelly said. “He put on projects and shows that delighted people and entertained them. He was the kind of man who was young at heart. His days were filled with interesting people.”

Now, Kelly’s days are not much different.

But television production and marketing is only one aspect of Kelly’s life. She has played soccer and Gaelic football, ran three New York City marathons, hikes outdoors and has traveled throughout the South Pacific and Asia. With Maura Kelly, whether it be career or travel, one can only ask, where next?

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