Ken Belson Kelly Lecture
Monday, April 27
1:30 p.m.
The University Club
New York Times sports business writer and author, Ken Belson, gives lecture and book signing
Belson will discuss his book, Every Day Is Sunday, about the business of the N.F.L. and how it rose to become the world's richest league that captured the American zeitgeist.
About the speaker
Ken Belson is a sports business reporter for The New York Times, a job that includes covering the N.F.L. and its social, legal, medical and financial challenges. He has interviewed commissioners, owners, athletes and many others. He has covered Super Bowls, the World Series, marathons, Olympic Games and even oral arguments at the Supreme Court.
He has also worked in the Metro section writing about transportation, economics and energy, and in the Business Section where he covered media and telecommunications. Mr. Belson spent his first three years at The Times, starting in 2001, in Tokyo, where he covered business in Japan.
Prior to The Times, he wrote for Bloomberg, Reuters and Business Week, all in Tokyo, where he lived for 12 years.
In 2011, Mr. Belson returned to Japan to join a team that was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for its coverage of the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Fukushima. In 2017, he was part of another team that was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the mass shooting in Las Vegas.
Every Day Is Sunday, the story of the N.F.L.’s rise to prominence, is his second book. He is also the co-author of a book on Hello Kitty, Japan’s answer to Mickey Mouse.
About the Kelly Lecture series
A generous fund from the Hugh and Ethel Kelly Gift allowed the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science and the College of Engineering to establish this distinguished speaker series in 2013. The inaugural lecture, presented by Nobel Laureate Steven Chu, was attended by over one thousand members of the Virginia Tech community.
The series honors the Kellys' love for Virginia Tech by providing an opportunity for students, faculty, and the community to interact with visionary leaders. The lectures are a dynamic forum for new knowledge and a catalyst for future research.
About the Kellys
Hugh Kelly was a double alumnus of Virginia Tech, earning a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1937 and a master's degree a year later. Kelly worked as an engineer at AT&T’s famed Bell Laboratories, where he played important roles in groundbreaking projects including the 1962 launch of the Telstar communications satellite, the first private venture in space; he died in 1989. Ethel Kelly, who died in 2012, generously supported Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering as a way of honoring her husband’s legacy.