Chris Kelley (MBA ’06)

Chris Kelley has been a member of the CBU Community since 2003, as Executive Director/President of the Barret School of Banking, which is headquartered on the Christian Brother University campus with offices in Buckman Hall. It also offers the Barret Graduate School, a three-year graduate program with an annual one-week residency session on the CBU campus, and works closely with the CBU School of Business on its undergraduate Banking program. He earned his MBA at CBU in 2006.

Before joining the Barret School of Banking and CBU, Chris earned his BSBA in Finance at the University of Tennessee and then came to Memphis as a Senior Vice President/Regional Manager at National Bank of Commerce (which merged with SunTrust Bank in 2005 and was acquired by Truist Financial Corporation in 2019). He was named to the Memphis Business Journal “Top 40 Under 40” in 2009.

Chris has been happily married for 26 years to Dr. Lurene Kelley, who also joined the CBU Community in 2019 as the Online Student Success Specialist with the Center for Digital Instruction. They are the parents of two awesome children — Maddox, age 17, and Cleo, age 13. They are active members of Immaculate Conception Catholic Church and counsel couples who are newly engaged while they prepare for their weddings.

Chris also serves as Chairman of the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis and has been a member of its Board since 2017. He has also been a Facilitator with Leadership Memphis since 2010 and a volunteer at Room In The Inn since 2016. He has previously served on the Board of Leadership Memphis and as a member and President of the PTA at Peabody Elementary School. He has also served on the CBU Business School Advisory Council and as a Volunteer Youth Coach in baseball and soccer for Idlewild Presbyterian Church as part of the East Shelby County Church Recreation Association.

The best lesson I’ve learned at CBU is living the Lasallian Mission. I try to practice these tenets in all that I do — work, volunteering, parenting, etc.