Celebrating M.O.gul Women of Excellence

Kelly Fair is the Founder and Executive Director of Polished Pebbles Girls Mentoring Program, an Illinois Gold Star rated mentoring program that enhances the life skills, career readiness, and leadership ability of girls and young women. She is the author of "They’re All the Same Girl" and "Every Girl Is a CEO." Kelly is an award-winning social entrepreneur and sought-after speaker who advocates for girls, women, mentoring, and workforce pipelining. Since launching Polished Pebbles in 2009 in Chicago, Kelly’s signature communications and job readiness programming has expanded from elementary age girls to include high schools, college programs, families, prominent women leaders, and to sites across the Chicagoland area and in Northwest Indiana, Dallas, Texas, and North Carolina.

Polished Pebbles has worked with over 10,000 African American and Latinx girls and young women and provided over 600 mentors in hundreds of schools and has raised $7 million for partnering schools and communities. Kelly is a sought-after speaker for mentoring, communication skills, girls’ development and job readiness, professional leadership development, and social entrepreneurship.

Her work on behalf of girls and young women has earned recognition from the U.S. State Department, Goldman Sachs One Million Black Women, Crain’s Chicago Business, Bank of America, Ann Taylor, Vital Voices, ComEd, Verizon, Google, Duke University, Chicago Foundation for Women, Operation PUSH, Social Enterprise Alliance, and more. She has been featured by ESSENCE, EBONY, and Black Enterprise magazines, The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, The Chicago SunTimes, Chicago Woman magazine, and The Kelly Clarkson Show. She currently serves on the U.S. Congressional Caucus on Black Women and Girls Taskforce and the Illinois Council for Women and Girls. Kelly is a graduate of Howard University and the University of Iowa, with honors. She is a true “south side girl” and lives in Chicago’s Chatham neighborhood.