Kelly Howard is an Executive Member of the Cornerstone Collaborative and an adjunct professor in SCU's Doctorate of Whole Health Leadership program. She also designs and delivers integrative health curricula at the University of Health and Performance and teaches group coaching at the University of Minnesota's Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing. Kelly also serves as a Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, working with the Holistic Health and Fitness directorate on the expansion of yoga and mindfulness enterprise wide.

From 2012-2022 she developed and led the VA's Whole Health Education program, educating and training VA leaders, clinicians, and coaches nationwide. During this time, her team created multiple face-to-face and virtual courses for clinicians (Whole Health in Your Practice, Pain and Suffering, Eating for Whole Health, Mental Wellbeing, Social and Structural Determinants of Health, Coaching Skills for Clinicians, Emergency Medicine, Nurse Leaders, and Inpatient Nursing), for non-clinicians (Whole Health Coaching, Taking Charge of My Life, Partner Skills, and Mentoring), and for leaders and supervisors (Empowering Your Team and Leading Change). Her team also created the Whole Health Library, Passport to Whole Health Reference manual, and nine online courses (Whole Health Foundations: A Personal Experience, Mindful Awareness, Clinician Self-Care, Introduction to Complementary and Integrative Health, Facilitation, Eating for Whole Health, Functional Nutrition for Pain, Pain and Suffering, and Coaching Demonstrations). In total, over 250,000 VA staff were educated and trained during this time, along with nearly one hundred national and local educators to spread Whole Health education at the national, regional, and local levels.  

Kelly was in the first class of Certified Duke Integrative Health Coaches through Duke Integrative Medicine in 2010 and the first cohort of National Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coaches in 2017. She has been a yoga instructor (RYT-500) for nearly twenty years and has completed over 1,000 hours of yoga teacher training. She holds additional certifications in breathwork, death coaching, and mind-body nutrition. 

She has served in the US Army since 1998: with troops at Ft. Hood and Schofield Barracks, as the Operations Officer for the Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq, and as Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff of the Army at the Pentagon. She deployed twice to Iraq, serving in Tikrit in the first year of the war and Baghdad during the Surge. She is currently assigned to US Army Training and Doctrine Command, Fort Eustis, Virginia.

Kelly had two life events that drew her in the direction of Whole Health: the first was having her thyroid removed at the age of 14 due to acute onset Graves’ disease, and the second was brought on by efforts to heal physically, mentally, and spiritually after her second deployment to Iraq in her twenties.  

Kelly is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point with a B.S. in Political Science, Latin American Studies, and Environmental Engineering, and has a Master of Arts in Human Resources Management. She lives in her hometown of Richmond, Virginia, with her two young daughters.