During the interview for this story, Emmy Rogers, the resource development director for the Boys & Girls Club of Saline County in Benton, looked at Jasen Kelly and said, “I hope that smudge wasn’t on your face while he was taking your picture.”
Puzzled, Kelly looked at her and asked, “What do you mean?”
“You got this big black mark on your face,” she said joking trying to convince him that the pictures would turn out bad.
But that’s just the kind of relationship that Kelly, the chief executive officer for the club, has with his employees.
“The camaraderie within the whole group has a relaxed feel, and that’s because of Jason’s playful approach,” Rogers said. “It is nice to have a boss who doesn’t take everything too seriously.”
Kelly was recently awarded the Blue Spirit Award at the Boys & Girls Clubs of America Southwest Leadership Conference. Jim Clark, the chairman and CEO of BGCA, said the Blue Spirit Award recognizes a club professional “whose tireless devotion has positively changed kids’ lives, an individual who characterizes our pledge to create great futures.”
“By driving incredible engagement from his board and staff, he has truly raised the bar for excellence in his community, state and the Southwest Region,” Clark said in a statement.
Kelly said he views the award as a leadership award but also as an organizational award — “what we are doing right as an organization and how much we are growing as an organization. I think it has a lot to do with our footprint and how many lives we are touching throughout the entire county.”
Kelly was hired as the program director for the Boys & Girls Club of Saline County 18 years ago and in that time has been promoted to director of operations, then chief executive officer in 2006.
“When I came to this job, I thought it was just a temporary job until I found something better,” Kelly said. “I thought to myself, I would work here for a while until I found something I like or something with a better opportunity.”
He said the big draw of the job was the fact that he is an alumni of the club, after attending it for six years.
“From the age of 6 to 12, I went here,” Kelly said, “but then we moved, and transportation was obviously a barrier.
“But I did come here for six years, and it did have an impact on my life.”
Kelly graduated from Glen Rose High School in 1993 and earned a bachelor’s degree in health and wellness with an emphasis in cardiac rehab from the University of Arkansas at Monticello. He is the son of Jim and Linda Kelly.
“I went to UAM, where I played basketball, and after my senior year, I was a cardiac intern at St. Vincent Hospital,” Kelly said. “After my internship, I was hired in that department, but I was laid off in October of 1998.”
Kelly said Arkansas Heart Hospital had become the main heart hospital, so “our department wasn’t seeing a ton of patients.”
“I [maybe worked] one day a week, so I had to look for something more stable,” Kelly said. “I applied for this job because it was open.”
He said the Boys & Girls Club has seen a steady growth during his tenure.
“The number of children we have served, the number of staff we have has definitely grown,” Kelly said. “When I first started, we had five full-time employees, and now we are up to 15 full-time employees and 50 part-time staff.
“We also have a lot of growth in the number of children we serve.”
When Kelly was promoted to CEO, he said one of the things he wanted to accomplish was, “I wanted to make sure we were always accessible to every child, and that transportation was never a barrier,” he said. “Once those children walk through those doors, they feel safe, they complete their home work, and they are fed.
“[Those are] the things that are so important to me. And lastly, we want them to have a great time.”
Heath Massey has been the athletic director for the club for 17 years, and Kelly credited him for its growth.
“Our sports program has more than tripled since I started here, and that’s obviously due to Heath Massey,” Kelly said. “He’s the one who has really turned around our program.
“He is the leader in our sports program year-round.”
The club in Benton has an average daily attendance of 600, and Kelly said that is a result of the confidence of the children and their families.
“We have three club houses, right, and we are about to expand to a fourth,” Kelly said.
The new club building, which is behind Holland Chapel Baptist Church in Benton, is scheduled to open in March of next year. Kelly said it is a “multimillion-dollar, state-of-the-art facility in partnership with the city and individual donors.
“We will continue to use this club as our teen club, for seventh grade up to 12th grade. The new facility is scheduled to open March 27, and it can hold 600 kids.”
The new club is more than 52,000 square feet and almost doubles what the current facility holds. The new building includes a huge indoor basketball court that will host the basketball leagues and other daily activities. The club also has a food court, a safe room and a music room.
Jim Handley, president of the Boys & Girls Club Board, said in a statement, “[Kelly] is just an outstanding young man.
“As much as any pastor was ever called by God to preach, Jasen was called to be the director of our Boys & Girls Club.”
Rogers said Kelly and Massey are the biggest jokesters of the club.
“We joke if Jason doesn’t tease you somehow, then he is mad at you,” Rogers said. “He is a prankster, and so is Heath.
“It makes for a fun workday.”
Rogers said that whenever Kelly is out of town or on vacation, Massey and others plan a prank on him.
“I know one year they put a ‘For sale’ sign up at his house and took the tires off his truck another,” Rogers said. “We can only do that to him because he’s going to do it to us, too.”
Rogers oversees the fundraisers and the individual donors and was hired five years ago for a position that had never before existed.
“We are very fortunate to have Emmy the last five years,” Kelly said. “It gives us the opportunity to go out and raise the necessary funds to serve more children, more often.”
Rogers said she applied for the position after working in and commuting to Little Rock.
“It was just one of those things orchestrated by God,” Rogers said. “I didn’t know Jasen, and he didn’t know me, and I didn’t have any connection to the club.
“But when we met, it was like instant that I knew this was the right place for me.”
Kelly said the club is not a perfect organization because “I know the leader too well.”
“But if we can serve more kids, more often, then we have won the day,” Kelly said.
Staff writer Sam Pierce can be reached at (501)-244-4314 or spierce@arkansasonline.com.