Kelley Rich is the interim vice president and associate provost for innovation at the IDEA Center. The IDEA Center is the innovation hub that drives commercialization and entrepreneurship activities at the University.
Kelley Rich is an experienced intrapreneur with over 15 years of innovation and marketing experience with leadership roles across a wide-range of cross-function areas including: new business creation, product development, market testing, brand management, e-business and licensing. She is a forward-thinking, collaborative team leader with a passion for innovation and a drive for results.
Prior to joining The IDEA Center, Kelley was Senior Category Manager for Whirlpool Corporation’s innovation incubator (WLabs) where she managed the very successful crowdfunding launch of Zera™ Food Recycler on Indiegogo. While at SC Johnson, she led the first cross-functional team in a newly created “Breakthrough Innovation” organization focused on pioneering new customer discovery and ideation processes to identify highly incremental new product innovation opportunities. Her brand management experience includes: Whirlpool®, Amana®, KitchenAid®, Ziploc®, Raid®, and Glade®.
Passionate about education and developing the next generation of leaders, she has held key positions on corporate high school internship and innovation challenge programs. She also serves on the Project Committee of the St. Joseph Public Schools Foundation.
Kelley has an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, an MS in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Cincinnati, and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University.