Our 2018 Legacy Awards Gala Honorees are Jeff Sprecher and Kelly Loeffler

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta is proud to honor Jeff Sprecher and Kelly Loeffler as their 2018 Legacy Honorees for the example they set as leaders and mentors within the Atlanta community. Jeff is the Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE: ICE) and Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. Kelly is Chief Executive Officer of Bakkt, a regulated, global ecosystem for digital currencies, and is a member of ICE’s Executive Management Committee. They were married in 2004.

Although both Midwesterners born and bred — Jeff from Wisconsin and Kelly from Illinois — the couple have embraced Atlanta as their home, part of the migration to this region of entrepreneurial talent and vision that has made this part of Georgia home to some of the world’s fastest growing tech companies.

For Jeff, he first arrived here in 1997 from California, where he was an entrepreneur in the power industry, and acquired the nascent Atlanta-based Continental Power Exchange to build a new market operator. Jeff and a small team launched Intercontinental Exchange in 2000, which has evolved from an energy market to an operator of more than a dozen exchanges and global market infrastructure, including the New York Stock Exchange. Relied upon in markets around the world and through relentless innovation, organic growth and acquisitions, ICE now has a market cap of over $40 billion.

For Kelly, she joined ICE in 2002 to build the investor relations, communications and marketing platform to help bring the company public, which completed its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in 2005. She led these programs for over 15 years before ICE announced the formation of Bakkt in 2018. A former equity analyst, she had firsthand experience in commodity markets, having grown up on a family farm where they grew soybeans and corn and raised cattle. From college, her career took her into the auto industry and then, after receiving her MBA, into finance, serving as an analyst for Citi Global Asset Management and William Blair before being recruited to ICE.

Along with the tireless work of the 5,000 global employees of Intercontinental Exchange, their efforts have made ICE a member of the Fortune 500 and, last year, named to the Fortune Future 50, a ranking of companies that are best positioned for growth amid a complex operating environment. Individually, Jeff has been named to Barron’s annual list of the “World’s 30 Best CEOs” every year since 2014.

In Atlanta and elsewhere, Jeff and Kelly have been recognized widely for their community engagement. They are recipients of the National Monuments Foundation’s “Millennium Gate Prize”; James Magazine’s “Georgians of the Year”; and Georgia Trend’s “100 Most Influential Georgians”.

Jeff was inducted into the Georgia Technology Hall of Fame for 2016 and served as the 2017 Chairman of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and continues to serve on the MAC Executive Committee. He is a Trustee of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and serves on the Board of Directors for the Buckhead Coalition, The Commerce Club, Atlanta Committee for Progress and Engage Ventures. He was also co-chair of the Atlanta Police Foundation’s 2016-2018 “Cutting Edge, Cutting Crime, a Campaign for a Model City” that raised over $20 million which will continue to bring awareness and the resources for the City of Atlanta.

Kelly is co-owner of the WNBA Atlanta Dream, along with Mary Brock, which is the only women-owned professional sports team in Georgia, an outgrowth of her passion for athletics that saw her compete in track, cross country and basketball during high school. She is also a member of the Boards of Grady Memorial Hospital Corporation, Skyland Trail, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and she was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Georgia Research Alliance.

Jeff and Kelly are proud to support the mission, volunteers and programs that bring children together with mentors to have a positive impact on their lives.

Congratulations, Jeff and Kelly! Thank you!