Kelly serves as the Behavioral Economics Leader & Partner at Deloitte. She is leveraging the firm's deep industry expertise and innovation capabilities to advance the impact the field has on complex challenges.

Previously, Kelly led the helm as the Founding CEO of BEworks, the world’s first commercial behavioral economics advisory firm, which she cofounded in 2010 with the renowned scholars Dan Ariely and Nina Mazar. She guided the sale of the firm to the international creative services agency kyu, held by Hakuhodo Holdings of Tokyo, Japan, in 2017. She continued to serve as the firm's CEO for six more years following its acquisition.

She first crafted the BE Method in 2009 while at RBC Royal Bank of Canada to build a bridge between cutting-edge science and real-world application. RBC was amongst the world's first companies to leverage behavioral science, from insights through to experimentation (in-field randomized controlled tests). The Method has since been applied to strategy, marketing, and operations challenges at Fortune 500 companies including Unilever, Georgia Pacific, CitiBank, and Manulife. She has provided oversight for over 300 projects in the financial services, health care, retail, and sustainability domains.


Kelly studied philosophy with a particular curiosity in how technology changed behavior. Having seen the beta version of what became the World Wide Web, she started her professional career with dotcom startups in the early 1990s where her experience included serving as the project manager that brought the Financial Post and CHATELAINE magazine online, followed by leading the product development team of iMoney, a fintech startup later acquired by Rogers Media. She spent over a decade driving strategy & innovation teams in the banking sector for BMO Bank of Montreal and then Royal Bank of Canada where, in 2009, she launched the first in-house BE practice which thrives to this day.


She has served as a faculty lecturer at the Rotman School of Business, Cornell, Columbia, and Harvard. She is a frequent international keynote speaker and has delivered three TEDx talks. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals and has also appeared in numerous media outlets such as New York Times, Globe and Mail, CBC, and Business Insider. 


She served as an advisor on the 19 to Zero not-for-profit coalition which supported Canada's public health leaders in COVID-19 strategies including tackling vaccine hesitancy. She also participated in several US roundtables, including presenting to then-incoming Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy. 


She was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022 by the prestigious Consulting Magazine as a trailblazer for her ability to innovate, deliver the highest levels of client service and affect positive change for her peers, her teams, and the industry. Previous awards include recognition for being an Innovation leader in the dotcom sector by MecklerMedia in 1999 and Volunteer of the Year by Flare Magazine for her work as Executive Director of WebGrrls Toronto, then Canada, 1995-1999.


In 2022, she founded Trial Run, a product innovation company dedicated to bringing together the power of behavioral science with block chain technologies in order to help aspirational leaders drive their sustainability goals.



Her current research interests are dedicated to three main areas:

1. exploring how ESG goals can be powered by blockchain and behavioral science

2. helping senior leaders deliver on their values through stakeholder capitalism

3. transforming the way organizations operationalize innovation through behavioral science.


"I see a world where companies take ownership in their ESG initiatives to the point that they treat them like assets that appreciate."




Selected Writing




Product Innovation (incomplete list)



Patents


Patents Assigned to ASIGRA INC. - Justia Patents Search 



Interviews


Select Key Notes


Select Global talks


Research Featured in the Media



Profiles




Scientific Publications



Case Studies

BEworks: Experimentation in Business | Harvard Business Publishing Education 



Selected Industry Projects

Financial services

with Manulife

Behavioural Economics, achieve better client outcomes (manulifeim.com) 

Manulife partners with BEworks to train advisors in behavioural economics | Advisor.ca 

The Value of Behaviorally Informed Financial Advice Study.pdf (beworks.com) 

with CSI

Behavioural Economics for Financial Advisors (BEFA) < Canadian Securities Institute (csi.ca) 

with IFIC

IFIC and BEworks Release Behavioural Economics Research Report | IFIC.ca 

IFIC Announces Second Phase of Behavioural Economics Research | IFIC.ca 

with the OSC

OSC Press Release: November 2020 (beworks.com) 


Sustainability 

with Unilever

Purpose, product and innovation: Hellmann’s recipe for success | Unilever 

New Canadian Study Finds Canadians Can Reduce Household Food Waste by a Third with Just One 'Use-Up Day' Per Week (newswire.ca) 

Sex Trafficking with Polaris

BEworks Conversations with Robert Beiser: Understanding Human Trafficking using Behavioral Science 


Energy / Utilities

Alectra Utilities Regulated Price Plan Pilot – Interim Report (oeb.ca) 

Regulated Price Plan Pilot – Dynamic Pricing Final Report (oeb.ca) 

Alectra Utilities receives international Smart 50 Award for consumer-centric Advantage Power Pricing pilot (newswire.ca) 



worker safety / innovation 

with Corvex

Behavior-Based Safety | Corvex and BEworks White Paper (corvexconnect.com)

with Georgia Pacific 

Artificial intelligence and behavioral economics meet to address worker safety, with Bruce Ainsworth (youtube.com) 




Podcast Series

 


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