Dr. Kelly Keena is the senior director of UL Research Institutes’ Office of Research Experiences & Education.

With a rich background in teaching and curriculum development in STEM and environmental education, Keena has over 25 years of experience teaching students of all ages and training educators worldwide.

Keena’s research expertise is in emergent inquiry into lived experiences of children, youth, and educators, and as a principal evaluator, she helped small organizations understand their outcomes and impacts. She also served as the chair of the Federal Advisory Council on education for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Joining ULRI in 2015, Keena established online learning platform Xplorlabs.org to bring ULRI’s safety science research into middle and high schools. With OREE’s creation in 2022, Keena added an educational research initiative and expanded the office’s mission by creating pathway programs ranging from high school to post-graduate.

Keena holds a bachelor’s in international environmental geography, a master’s in instruction and curriculum, and a doctorate in educational leadership and innovation from the University of Colorado Denver. She was recognized as the 2023 Women of Color STEM Award for Educational Leadership-Corporate Promotion of Education recipient and received Colorado’s Enos A. Mills Lifetime Achievement Award in Environmental Education in 2018.