Kelley Dennings, MPH

Kelley Dennings holds a bachelor’s degree in natural resources from N.C. State and a master’s degree in public health from the University of South Florida. She is certified in project management, public health, social marketing, and family planning counseling. She is a senior campaigner with the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity where she develops and executes advocacy and outreach initiatives that address the connections between reproductive health, gender equity, endless growth and the climate and extinction crises. Her campaigns focus on solutions from voluntary family planning to alternative economies to address how the effects of patriarchy, capitalism and other systems of oppression affect people and the environment. Prior to the Center, she worked as a local government recycling coordinator, then worked for NC’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources before moving to the nonprofit sector where she worked with Keep America Beautiful and the American Forest Foundation.

Her research and case studies have been published in Social Marketing Quarterly, Journal of Environmental Health, Journal of Extension, Journal of Population and Sustainability, Journal of Social Issues and The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing. She’s been published in EcoWatch, Environmental Health News, Ms. Magazine, Nonprofit Quarterly, Resource Recycling, Rewire and Sustainability Times.

In 2013, she was awarded the Rising Star award from the Waste and Recycling News Group. In 2018, she won Millbank’s Social Marketing Award for Innovation in the Environmental Field and in 2019 the Outstanding Achievement Award from the World Social Marketing Conference.

Dennings is an elected member of the National Women's Health Network board, Shareable and the founding president of the nonprofit Social Marketing Association of North America. She is also the co-chair of the Contraception Task Force of the Sexual/Reproductive Health Section of the American Public Health Association.

Sub-specialties:
Alternative economic models
Waste prevention and recycling - policies and outreach campaigns;
Simplifying the Holidays;
Contraceptive counseling;
Empowerment of women and family planning - policies and outreach campaigns;
Behavior change frameworks like social marketing, design thinking, behavioral economics