The John Kelly Memorial Scholarship

Our brother John, who died suddenly in August 2010, was a respected and inspirational business leader, a warm and generous brother, father, husband and friend. He touched the lives of family, friends, clients and colleagues with his goodness, grace, sincerity, integrity and remarkable insight.

He was born and brought up in Calcutta, where our father ran Lipton’s Tea. He went to boarding school at Clongowes Wood College in Ireland and went on to study Economics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he met his wife, Gillian.

John was an experienced business leader with a specialist interest in the realisation of strategy and organisational change. He initially worked for Unilever in the UK and then moved to Coopers & Lybrand where he helped to set up the consultancy business in Malaysia. He returned to the UK to become Managing Partner of E&Y Consulting UK and launched and ran the Global Innovation and New Service Development Group. In 2003 he co-founded Bridge Consulting International to focus on providing the link between the strategic issues facing senior leaders and the development of their leadership teams. He advised the UK Department of Health, on best practise in measuring quality of care and patient safety and major US health care organisations on the Obama Administration healthcare reforms. As a board level advisor to some of the world's top organisations, he wanted to give his knowledge and experience to the wider community and became a Non-Executive Director of Ashford and St. Peter's NHS Hospital Trust shortly before his death.

John had a keen sense of focus and calm that few leaders possess: he was a leader of significant compassion and he truly believed everyone had potential that could be nurtured. The many tributes to him by colleagues & friends emphasised the profound and positive effect he had on everyone he met. 

John loved to travel. He lived and worked all around the world. He played, watched and loved rugby infecting those around him with his passion for the game and for the London Irish rugby team.  He was immense fun and a great storyteller.

He cared much about education, sport and helping others. We feel that he would want to help and support young people in Calcutta achieve their potential and that this scholarship would be a fitting way to honour his very dear memory, his great enthusiasm for life, for having fun and celebrating achievement. We hope the scholarship will go towards supporting university fees (~ £2000/ year) for one of the young pupils in Future Hope and will be awarded annually.

 If you would like to donate, please make cheques payable to Future Hope UK indicating that you would like to donate to:

The John Kelly Memorial Scholarship

and send to:

Future Hope UK

107 Abbotsbury Road

London  W14 8EP

 Or Donate Online:    www.justgiving.com/johnkellymemorialscholarship

 Deirdre and Kate Kelly