While others attack problems straight on, Kelly Brough, MBA ’89, likes to approach them sideways, or even upside down. As Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce’s new president and CEO, she hopes that fresh point of view will serve her well.
In October the 46-year-old Democrat replaced Joe Blake, a gregarious Republican who spent nearly 10 years at the chamber’s helm. “It’s impossible to follow someone like Joe,” she says. “I just try to keep my eye on the issues and off the big ‘P’ politics.”
Brough (rhymes with “rough”) has spent a lifetime encountering obstacles and finding solutions. While she was in junior high school, her father was injured and lost his job as a pipeline worker. She saved $10,000 by working at Dairy Queen, using the money to pay for a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Montana State University. When she found counseling youth too draining to continue for a lifetime, she found another way to contribute.
“I thought maybe if I got on the business end, I could run a good institution,” Brough says. She enrolled in CU Denver’s Executive MBA program, worked at a residential treatment center and, even before graduating, found her way into the City and County of Denver as a personnel analyst.
Over the next two decades, she directed major reforms in human resources and the Office of Accountability and Reform, and served as chief of staff for Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.
“I’m an eternal optimist. I believe that if we work hard enough we can find the solution,” Brough says.
Often that solution lies in unusual alliances, a lesson she learned at CU Denver when MBA students teamed with the Archdiocese of Denver to assess the financial viability of a proposed housing project.
“Here’s a nonprofit working with MBA students who are all about profit,” Brough says. “I like the notion that the public and private sectors have to work together to get the job done.”
The only job Brough didn’t love was dishwashing in college, but she says every other position has led to incredible opportunities.
Now serving as the public face of Denver’s business community, she is less interested in where it will lead and more focused on what needs to be done. “I can’t imagine a more important place to be as we come out of this economic climate.”