Dr. McElhaney is the Alexander Faculty Fellow and the founding Faculty Director of the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. She launched this center in 2003, which has helped place corporate responsibility squarely as one of the core competencies and competitive advantages of the Haas School. Her Center has received global critical acclaim with The Financial Times rating Haas #1 in the world in 2008.
Professor McElhaney teaches courses on Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility, which include in-depth, experiential consulting engagements with companies on real-world, high-visibility strategic CSR challenges, in all of the MBA degree programs at Haas. She is developing a new course on using the Power of Social Technology for Good (PoST4Good). She also teaches extensive Executive Education in this area. Kellie was named a Faculty Pioneer by the Aspen Institute in 2005. Her research focus is in three areas: (1) Analyzing and developing companies’ CSR strategy and its alignment with corporate strategy, business objectives, core competencies, and business value; (2) Exploring the linkage between diversity and CSR and using CSR as a hook to re-engage women with business as employees, consumers, and investors; (3) The business value and opportunities in branding, communication and CSR, on which she has written a book entitled Just Good Business The Strategic Guide to Aligning Corporate Responsibility and Brand (http://www.amazon.com/Just-Good-Business-Strategic-Responsibility/).
Kellie consults to several Global 1000 companies in developing integrated CSR strategy, bridging her academic
focus with the practitioner world. Her client list includes HP, Gap, eBay, McDonalds, Levi, Wal-Mart, Target,
Clorox, Ernst & Young, NVIDIA, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Nokia (Finland), Navigant, Volunteer Match, Ford Motor Company, Bernard Hodes Group (Great Britain), PG&E, Driscolls Berries, Triage Consulting Group, Ulster Bank (Ireland), Kimberly-Clark, Frontline, Accenture, StatoilHydro (Norway), Yum! Brands, and PG&E.
She is a highly engaging and motivational public speaker in the area of CSR, and has keynoted at major
conferences, leadership summits, and corporate events all over the world.
Her consulting expertise includes the following areas:
- Assessing current CSR initiatives and identifying/ mapping gaps, strengths, opportunities, risks
- Developing and integrating CSR strategy with company’s core business objectives and
core competencies to produce financial and social/ environmental returns - Benchmarking peer sectors, industries for good practices, industry leaders, company
placement amongst peers - Facilitating and leading global corporate stakeholder dialogues, both internally and
externally - Developing and teaching in-house CSR executive education/ corporate education
programs/ annual meeting presentations for company leadership, managers, senior
executives, and Boards - Analyzing, assessing, and improving CSR branding, communication, reporting, and
measurement - Coaching/ advising to internal corporate leaders who are trying to introduce, develop,
integrate CSR strategy and/ or product/ service offerings within their companies
Kellie serves on the Sustainability & Environmental Advisory Committee (SEAC) for the Dow Chemical
Company, the Advisory Council for SustainAbility, and the Boards for Globescan, VolunteerMatch, and Soul of
Haiti, which she helped to found with a group of Irish CEOs in 2007 to support social enterprise and economic
development through commerce in Haiti. She lives in the Oakland Hills in California and has two elementary
school-aged daughters. She enjoys photography, yoga, good wine, running and has even tried surfing.