Tim Kelly is the 66th mayor of Chattanooga and a native Chattanoogan with a lifetime of investment in the local community. After graduating from Columbia University, Kelly returned to his hometown, where he expanded his family’s automotive dealership and co-founded Chattanooga Football Club, the city’s first independent professional soccer team. He has taught entrepreneurship and marketing as an adjunct professor at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, and has served on boards and volunteered for numerous local nonprofits, including the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Chattanooga, the Benwood Foundation, River City Company, Allied Arts (now ArtsBuild), Chattanooga 2.0, and the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga. Since being elected mayor in April 2021, Kelly has focused on his One Chattanooga Plan — a strategic framework emphasizing systems-level transformation to create “a city where opportunity is available to every one of our neighbors."