Joe Kelly

Joe Kelly is a father, best-selling author, blogger, speaker and primary media source on fathering, appearing on the Today Show, Talk of the Nation, Fox News, as well as in Time, People, New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Parenting and dozens of other outlets.

Kelly’s speaks and teaches across North America on fathering, media and marketing’s impact on families, successful strategies for raising girls and boys, and how professionals can mobilize fathers as allies in their work.

He blogs for Dads & Daughters, TheDadMan.com and Deepak Chopra’s Intent.com - and is a contributor to Mothering.com and a featured author on Great Dads.com. He has written for Parents, Mothering and many other publications.

Joe is the author of seven books:

• Dads and Daughters: How to Inspire, Understand and Support Your Daughter
• The Dads & Daughters Togetherness Guide: 54 Fun Activities to Help Build a Great Relationship
• The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Being an Expectant Father
• The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Being a New Dad
• The Body Myth: Adult Women and the Pressure to Be Perfectwith Dr. Margo Maine
• Clean: A New Generation in Recovery Speaks Out with Chris Beckman
• The Positive Attitude Development Guide with Lyle Wildes (Fall 2008)

Dr. Mary Pipher calls Kelly’s best-selling book Dads and Daughters “an essential aid for the fathers of adolescent girls.” Of The Dads & Daughters Togetherness Guide, Pipher says: “If all the dads in the country read this book, family life would improve all over America. Girls would be stronger. Family would be healthier, and more fun.” He co-founded the national nonprofit Dads & Daughters.

In 1993, Kelly and his wife Nancy Gruver founded the groundbreaking New Moon Girls magazine, an international periodical edited by girls 8 to 12 years old. New Moon Girls is the only child-edited publication to win the prestigious Parent’s Choice Foundation Gold Award (seven times so far). Gruver and Kelly won Parentingmagazine’s 1995 Parenting Achievement Award.

Kelly won Father of the Year Awards from iParenting.com and the Women’s Sports Foundation. He belongs to the Center for Family Policy and Practice, the Men’s Task Force of the National Domestic Violence Hotline, Save Title IX Task Force, and serves on the board of the national Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and Minnesota Fathers & Families Network, and has been a consultant for the Men’s Resource Center for Change, WNBA, American Psychological Association Task Force on Sexualization of Girls, Take Our Daughters & Sons to Work Day, and other nonprofits. He has testified before the Congressional Children’s Caucus, the President’s blue ribbon Title IX commission, and the FDA. He also wrote two Annie E. Casey Foundation fathering program guides.

Kelly’s leadership on family and cultural issues puts him in contact with parents and professionals worldwide. He has keynoted for the National Eating Disorders Association (US), National Eating Disorder Information Centre (Canada), the National Association of Independent Schools, National Association of Science and Technology Centers, AAUW, and dozens of communities, universities and conferences.

Kelly and Gruver live in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Their adult daughters live in California. A New Jersey native, Kelly is the author of the play This Horse of a Body of Mine, co-editor of four nonfiction books for girls, and was an award-winning journalist for Minnesota Public Radio. He has a BS in philosophy and journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Superior.