Mary Anne Kelly came home to the Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council (MCHC) as vice president in 2003 after serving as executive director of the American Hospital Association’s American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration (ASHHRA). Before joining the AHA, she had been manager of MCHC’s Human Resource Services.

Kelly leads the Council’s Workforce Development Division – charged with developing and creating innovative programs and collaborations throughout the metropolitan Chicago area in an effort to ease the healthcare workforce shortage. Through key partnerships, MCHC has been able to identify successful small-scale workforce initiatives and build them into full-scale, region-specific relief efforts to create a pipeline of nurses and health care professionals.

Kelly also leads the Council’s Health Information Exchange department which is focused on long-term goals with the creation of a regional health information exchange with the northwestern part of Illinois, southern Wisconsin and northwest Indiana, as many people flow between these regions for health care.

As executive director of ASHHRA she served as the chief staff executive, chief operating officer and chief financial officer for the membership society. She remains actively involved in organizations including such as the Chicago Workforce Board, Nursing Spectrum’s Regional Advisory Board, the Illinois Workforce Investment Board Healthcare Task Force, the Midwestern University Dean’s Advisory Board, Illinois Coalition for Nursing Resources and ASHHRA. Earlier in her career, Kelly worked as employment manager at Saint Francis Hospital in Evanston.

Kelly earned a master’s degree in management from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree from Loyola University in Chicago.