Foundation Leadership

Rusty Kelley is the managing director and principal officer of the Retinal Degeneration Fund (RD Fund), the venture arm of the Foundation Fighting Blindness. Kelley helped launch the RD Fund in 2018 and brings over 25 years of experience in identifying, funding, and developing biotechnologies to his leadership role. Kelley is on the Executive Leadership team of the Foundation and is currently a Board director of SparingVision and Nacuity and a Board observer for Atsena Therapeutics, Perceive Bio, and Amber Bio. Kelley was a founding Board director of Opus Genetics and previously served as a Board observer for Stargazer Pharmaceuticals and Vedere Bio II.

Before the RD Fund, Kelley directed the translational and interdisciplinary science funding portfolios at the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. Kelley previously served on the bench as a scientist, then as a director and head of preclinical at Tengion, a tissue engineering spinout of Boston Children’s Hospital and Wake Forest University. Earlier in his career, Kelley served on the bench in analytical chemistry and in formulation development in the divisions of Wet Chemistry and Pharmaceutics at AAIPharma, and then in clinical development at PPD, Inc., where he helped develop and manage clinical trials in the divisions of Medicine, NIH trials, and Infectious Disease.

Kelley earned a BA in Chemistry from UNC Chapel Hill and a PhD in Pharmacology at LSU’s Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. Kelley then trained as a postdoc fellow in the School of Medicine at UNC Chapel Hill, where he was awarded an American Heart Association fellowship. Kelley also earned an executive MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.