Joe Kelly

Journalist, activist and father Joe Kelly co-founded Dads and Daughters (DADs), the first national advocacy nonprofit for fathers and daughters. DADs provides men the tools to be better fathers and advocates for our daughters. DADs also publishes the award-winning newsletter Daughters. Kelly is a primary media source on fathering healthy daughters, appearing on NBC's Today Show, NPR's Talk of the Nation, CBS's Early Show, MSNBC, Lifetime, Fox News Channel and Voice of America, as well as in Time, People, New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Parenting and dozens of other outlets. He has written for Parents and Mothering magazines, among others, and is an expert for Mothering.com. Dr. Mary Pipher calls Kelly's best-selling book Dads and Daughters "an essential aid for the fathers of adolescent girls." It is based on his conversations with thousands of fathers across the country, more than a decade of speaking and writing on the subject, and 25 years experience as the father of twin daughters. In 1993, Kelly and his wife Nancy Gruver founded the groundbreaking international publication, New Moon: The Magazine for Girls and Their Dreams. Edited by girls 8 to 14 years old, New Moon is the only child-edited publication to win the prestigious Parent s Choice Foundation Gold Award multiple times. Gruver and Kelly won Parenting magazine's 1995 Parenting Achievement Award. In 2004, Kelly was named the Women's Sports Foundations Title IX Father of the Year and won the national Eating Disorders Coalition s Activist of the Year award. In 2001, he was iParenting.com's Dad of the Year. He belongs to the National Practitioners Network for Fathers and Families, Center for Family Policy and Practice, and serves on the board of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. Kelly's leadership on girls' issues, fathering, and media activism puts him in wide contact with fathers, girls, families, teachers, and other professionals who work with girls. He speaks and teaches frequently on fathering, media and marketing's impact on children, and successful strategies for raising girls and boys. Kelly has spoken before the National Association of Independent Schools, National Association of Science and Technology Centers, American Association of University Women, National Eating Disorders Association, and dozens of other conferences. He also has testified before the Congressional Children's Caucus, President Bush s blue ribbon Title IX commission, and the Food and Drug Administration. Kelly and Gruver live in Duluth, Minnesota. Their adult twin daughters, Mavis Gruver and Nia Kelly, live in California. A New Jersey native, Kelly, 51, 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.