St. Olaf Distinguished Service Award

Professional Biography
Kelly Irvine is a member of the Management Team and Director of Marketing & Communications for Carlson Capital Management. She oversees the firm’s marketing plans and project implementation; client communications and appreciation activities; event management and community involvement, all with an eye on keeping our clients’ experience at the forefront.

Kelly graduated with departmental distinction in Political Science from St. Olaf College, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree cum laude. Her career took her to Montana, Idaho, and Wisconsin before a returning to Minnesota. Kelly’s professional background spans both the corporate and non-profit sectors. She has held corporate management positions in community relations and human resources.

Community involvement is important to Kelly. She was selected as a Policy Fellow at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, where she was a 2004-2005 participant. Past activities have included volunteer advisory committee service at St. Dominic School and co-chairing 5th Bridge-Feed My Starving Children Northfield meal-packing events. Kelly is also a past board member of the Northfield Area Family YMCA and of the Helena Education Foundation. Kelly, her husband Colin, and their two children spent the 2010-2011 school year living in and working from Oslo, Norway. She now telecommutes from Sioux Falls, South Dakota where she resides with her family.

Personal Thoughts
Like many Minnesotans, I grew up with the privilege of “going to the Lake” in the summer. (Much to the chagrin of my spouse, who hails from the West, we Midwesterners never really bother to specify which lake. It’s just the Lake.) Not unlike many families in this area, I am fortunate in that early ancestors from Norway had the foresight to purchase lake front land where they wasted no time establishing family traditions – including an annual July 4th celebration. And while land is simply land, it’s our “landscape” that helps describe the essence of who we are. For me that landscape, and more precisely “the Lake,” is really all about family.

I recall my wedding day as guests came out of the chapel to greet us in the receiving line. My new mother-in-law from out of state stood next to me as I introduced her to many unfamiliar faces. She remarked later that every other person was “a cousin from the Lake.” How right she was. In our family, it doesn’t matter if one is a first cousin, a third cousin twice-removed, or the spouse of a second cousin – we are just cousins. Cousins range from several months old to those in their nineties, and, oddly enough, we consider ourselves part of an “immediate” family, even though the number of us easily exceeds a couple hundred. We all grew up spending summers at the Lake, and we were always accountable to the aunts in the generation (or two) ahead of us. We are there for one another’s weddings, funerals and sometimes birthdays. We look forward to sharing kransekake and rommegrot. We are intent on ensuring that our children know our cousins’ children. So, to know me is to know that I am a wife and a mother, a daughter and a sister, a grand-daughter, and, importantly, “a cousin.”

All of us at CCM look forward to learning your story, because that is how we at CCM have defined ourselves as a company, and that is how we will continue to define ourselves in the future. We must know you and your story before we can help you accomplish what is important to you.