Growing up in St. Cloud, Kate Kelly didn’t need to look beyond her family to find strong role models and people dedicated to impactful careers, educational achievement, and robust community involvement.

She was the sixth of eight children of Jim and June Kelly, a physician and nurse, who sent their children to Catholic schools, encouraged excellence in what their children did, and broadly exposed them to the arts and sciences.

Kate Kelly, who has distinguished herself through key leadership roles in Minnesota’s banking sector, showed an interest in banking well before college. “I was a saver,” Kelly confesses. “I always wanted to run my own bank since junior high.”

When she was still in high school, she had a fortuitous exchange with veteran banker Al Didier, who brought a crowd of people to Nevis, Minnesota, for a family reunion at the Coppersmith Lodge. The Kelly family owned the small resort, and amid the celebration, some wiring got ripped out between the cabins.

Kate Kelly smiles as she recalls her conversation with Didier. She walked up to him and said, “Mr. Didier, keep partying and have a great time. But if I could have your insurance number, I’ll take care of all of this.” She provided what the insurance company needed, and later in the reunion, Didier approached Kelly. She remembers him saying, “When you graduate from college, call me. I’d like to give you a job.”

A few years later, Kelly graduated from Cathedral High School in St. Cloud. She earned her bachelor’s degree with a double major in economics and humanities at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, where she also played the cello. In 1983, she called Didier. “He gave me a job,” Kelly says, so she started her banking career in St. Cloud as a teller in First American Bank. A year later, she says, “he gave me the opportunity to open their first branch on the west side of town.”

Then she was off to the University of Minnesota to earn an MBA in finance at the Carlson School of Management. Upon graduation, she accepted a job offer from First Bank, because it had an excellent management training program. She then moved into an analyst role at First Bank, doing work on mergers and acquisitions; stock repurchases; and employee stock option plans.

In the early years, she was involved in putting finance deals together. “Loan syndications really helped me in getting comfortable on the phone, talking to Japanese banks or whoever was going to buy our loans,” Kelly says.

“She has a deep understanding of the businesses within our community and what it means to have a healthy community from a financial-delivery perspective.”

—Jeanne Crain, President and CEO, Bremer Financial Corp.

Stepping up to leadership

In 1997, First Bank merged with U.S. Bancorp, and the combined entity assumed the U.S. Bancorp name. Kelly worked at First Bank and later U.S. Bancorp from 1985 through 2002. She was promoted numerous times, ultimately rising to district manager and vice president of corporate banking. In the Twin Cities, she led the southwest district, which included a portfolio of more than $500 million in loans and $110 million in deposits.

For the next five years, she worked for Bremer Financial Corp. She played a major role in leading Bremer’s wealth management strategy and served as one of four Bremer region presidents.

In 2007, Kelly began to realize her childhood dream of running her own bank. She was approached by investors who wanted to start a new financial institution, which became Minnesota Bank & Trust in Edina. Kelly became the founding president and CEO and took on this new challenge just before the Great Recession.

“I like building things,” Kelly says. “I like starting from scratch. That part doesn’t make me nervous.” The new bank targeted business customers who had $5 million to $200 million in annual revenue. She says they rode out the recession in good stead because the bank had an exceptional board and staff, many of whom had worked with Kelly earlier in her career.

“The folks I hired had deep relationships with their clients and a high trust level,” Kelly says. “We knew their businesses very well.” While company clients were struggling, she says, her staff would use financial models for different scenarios. Often, they needed to find ways to shore up a company’s equity.

“The bank was very creative” in solving problems, she says. She revels in the science (financial analysis) and art (relationship-building) that’s required to succeed in banking. Kelly remained in the top job at Minnesota Bank & Trust for a decade, growing it to $230 million in total assets.

Then a recruiter called her. Pittsburgh-based PNC Bank was looking for a bank leader to establish PNC in the Twin Cities market. After performing her due diligence—including meeting PNC leaders in Pennsylvania—Kelly accepted the new role. “What a great opportunity to have all the resources of the sixth-largest bank in the country yet be entrepreneurial and be able to make your imprint,” Kelly says.

Blazing a new trail

Kelly served as PNC regional president and executive vice president of the Minnesota market from 2017 to 2023. During her tenure, she increased PNC’s Minnesota revenue by about 300%.

Jeanne Crain, president and CEO of Bremer Financial Corp., says she views Kelly as a “trailblazer” because of her work at Minnesota Bank & Trust and PNC.

Not only does Kelly possess an “entrepreneurial spirit,” Crain says, “you have to be able to attract talent” to ensure that a new enterprise succeeds. In Kelly’s case, banking industry employees who knew her took a risk on joining a new financial institution because they had confidence in her leadership, she says.

“She has a deep understanding of the businesses within our community and what it means to have a healthy community from a financial-delivery perspective,” Crain says. She adds that Kelly has a reputation for supporting women in financial services across Minnesota.

That modus operandi carried over to PNC, says Julie Sudduth, PNC’s regional president in Houston. Kelly became Sudduth’s peer mentor after she was selected to lead PNC’s expansion into the Houston area.

“She was so generous with her time,” Sudduth says. “I had a vertical learning curve. I came out of the capital markets.” She says that Kelly’s advice was practical and user-friendly. “She told me how she ran her leadership meetings,” Sudduth says, and shared what her first-year priorities had been as she established PNC in the Twin Cities market.

“She was invested in the success of all of her PNC colleagues, not just her women colleagues,” Sudduth says, but women leaders across the U.S. benefited from a regular PNC call that Kelly initiated.

“My kids are 12, 10, 6, and 6,” she says, so it’s challenging to juggle a big job and four children. “Kate was so inspiring to me because she’s a mother of grown, successful adult children,” she says. Kelly has two daughters.

Kelly is well known for addressing social and economic problems through PNC financial support and her board service. She’s been on ServeMinnesota’s board for 20 years, including a decade as chair.

Julia Quanrud, CEO of ServeMinnesota, says that Kelly has been a strong advocate of expanding the Reading Corps and Math Corps programs, so that young children get the support they need to strengthen their skills, so they can succeed throughout their K-12 education.

“In our math-tutoring program, we don’t just see kids getting better at math, we also see their self-esteem improve,” says Quanrud, who adds that Kelly provided PNC funding for a math program that was developed for 4- and 5-year-olds.

“She is so good about being in that visionary space, but she is relentless about grounding it in day-to-day practicalities,” Quanrud says.

See the other 2024 Minnesota Business Hall of Fame inductees.