CV – Ben Kelahan

Ben has dedicated his career to studying the civic behavior of residents and representative state and local government bodies, applying that knowledge to client challenges and working with client consultant teams to implement solutions. It requires understanding both the psychology of civic engagement and its’ transfer to the actions and machinery of government that only comes with constant education and practical experience.

He began his career in 1996 amidst the public and government response to regulating the tobacco industry at The Tobacco Institute in Washington, in both the state activities and public affairs divisions. He directly participated in the industry’s efforts to manage public health legislation being driven by state and local governments and the passion of voters at local public hearings and demonstrations across the country.

While working at the Institute, he began graduate work at The George Washington University, concentrating in state and local government management and urban policy, receiving his masters of public administration in 2002 and becoming a member of the Pi Alpha Alpha Honor Society of Public Administration and Affairs. Ben’s capstone seminar at GWU focused on neighborhood improvement programs as applied in DC’s Ward Eight working with representatives from the DC Office of Planning.

After the multi-state tobacco settlement with the industry shut down the Tobacco Institute, Ben managed state and local government relations for Lorillard Tobacco Company in 15 states as a consultant. In the course of his duties, he participated on inter-industry teams to monitor and address local ordinances and ballot measures across the country. This included direct advocacy, managing lobbying and grassroots campaigns and coalition building with other trade organizations concerned about further regulation of the industry.

He then began a state government relations program at The National Mentoring Partnership, a not- for-profit organization dedicated to expanding youth mentoring programs. Ben’s work at the Partnership focused on direct lobbying at the state level, building local grassroots support programs and securing lobbying resources to support background check legislation and increased state government funding for youth mentoring programs.

After two years of day-to-day operations of an international lobbying network while at a public affairs firm, Ben joined The Saint Consulting Group. Ben spent two years in the field running community-based land use political campaigns to secure the local permitting votes of municipal planning and elected bodies; both in support of development projects; or, to defeat them. This required him to carefully conduct local community due diligence research, organize and direct citizen activist campaigns, collaborate with both pro-business and labor coalitions and manage his clients. Mostly, it required Ben to quickly establish trust with citizen stakeholders and activists, coach them on how to organize, transfer passion into political action and create a local voice on specific issues.

Ben then entered Saint Consulting’s management team, running the Mid-Atlantic office in the Metro DC area managing project managers and working with clients on land use political campaigns in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia, New Jersey and Washington, DC. These projects included contentious local and state property entitlement and regulatory permitting battles on hospital, residential and commercial real estate, and energy projects. During this period, Ben received additional firm-sponsored business management training in programs such as Harvard Business School’s Leading Professional Service Firms program.

Beginning in April of 2008, Ben was charged with the advancement of Saint Consulting’s energy practice. He was responsible for the business development, client satisfaction and project completion of all energy client work for the company. Projects included natural gas drilling and pipeline, wind energy, biomass, transmission line, and conventional power plant permitting cases like re-zonings and special use permits in addition to state regulatory certificates.

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