Vedder Price

Vedder Thinking

Kelly A. Starr

Shareholder

Member, Board of Directors

222 North LaSalle Street Chicago, Illinois 60601

+1 (312) 609 7768

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Kelly A. Starr

Shareholder

Member, Board of Directors

Kelly A. Starr is a member of the Executive Compensation & Employee Benefits group and the firm’s Board of Directors.

Ms. Starr counsels a variety of employers on all aspects of employee benefits law, including the design, tax qualification, legal compliance, correction, interpretation, communication and termination of broad-based employee benefit plans. She also negotiates and structures executive employment agreements and executive compensation and benefit arrangements, including incentive compensation and deferred compensation agreements, severance agreements and change-in-control programs, on behalf of both individual executives and companies. She has substantial experience advising boards of directors and their committees with respect to executive compensation issues.

Prior to attending law school, Ms. Starr was employed with the human resources department of Amoco Corporation.

Ms. Starr currently serves as the Chair of the firm’s Benefits Committee. She formerly served as the Chair of the firm’s Associate Evaluation Committee and as a member of the firm’s Shareholder Compensation Committee, Associate Hiring Committee, Diversity Committee and Nominating Committee.

Ms. Starr has been ranked in Chambers USA in the Illinois Labor & Employment: Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation category from 2013 to 2024. She has also been ranked in The Legal 500 United States’ Labor and Employment—Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation category from 2014-2022, the Employee Health and Retirement Plans category from 2017-2022 and the Labor & Employment: EBEC Design category from 2023-2024. In 2018, she was named to the “Chicago Notable Women Lawyers” list by Crain’s Custom Media. She has been included in The Best Lawyers in America guide since 2018. She was selected by her peers as a Leading Lawyer in Employee Benefits Law and is a member of the Leading Lawyers Network. Since 2006 she has been included in Illinois Super Lawyers magazine, and was named one of the publication’s “The Top Women Attorneys in Illinois” in 2013.

Kelly A. Starr

Shareholder

Member, Board of Directors

Education

  • University of Illinois College of Law, J.D., 1995, cum laude
  • Cornell University, B.S., 1988

Kelly A. Starr

Shareholder

Member, Board of Directors

Bar Admissions

  • Illinois, 1995

Court Admissions

  • U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, 1995

Affiliations

  • Member, American Bar Association (Sections on Taxation and Business Law)
  • Member, Chicago Bar Association

Kelly A. Starr

Shareholder

Member, Board of Directors

Kelly A. Starr

Shareholder

Member, Board of Directors