Kelly Peterson may have only started with the Superior Business Improvement District as their Executive Director in August of 2022, but she had a long resume full of helpful service to the people of the region that led her there. Indeed, Peterson’s life has been marked by her dedication to others, and her interest in helping grow Superior goes back a long way.
“My education is in school psychology,” Peterson said. “I have a Masters of Education from UW-Superior.” Even before her graduation, she found work at the Challenge Center. “It’s a not-for-profit agency in Superior providing services to adults with intellectual disabilities,” she said. “Once I got my Masters, I decided I really had a greater impact with the people that I was already serving, as opposed to working with kids.”
With time, Peterson realized that the business side of the job also appealed to her. “You have to meet the bottom line,” she said. “Realizing the importance of that, I think, was also something that came pretty naturally.”
This experience would point the way for her future. “I wanna be in a community where we’re all working together to make everything in the community better,” Peterson said. “That we have a place that cares about people at every level is exactly where I want to be in the world – I think that’s what Superior and Douglas County has.”
As might be expected of someone with an abiding interest in the improvement of the Superior community, Peterson’s schedule is packed full of duties and roles. She’s 10th District Supervisor on the Douglas County Board, she’s a member of the Rotary Club, serves as co-chair of the Superior Dragon Boat Festival, and she founded the Women in Business group. The list goes on, too.
“I’ve been on the Board of Directors for the [Superior] Development Association since, I think, 2019,” Peterson said. “I really like working with the businesses and seeing how vital they are to our community. And it was interesting getting to know a lot of the economic-development partners.”
“I care about our community and the environment and the people that live here and just anything that I can do to help – as long as people think I’m serving some good in the world, here, I gladly do it,” Peterson said. It’s this kind of attitude that led her to become a recipient of the Rosie Award, an honor named after the famed World War II icon Rosie the Riveter and awarded by the Duluth News Tribune in tandem with its Woman Today magazine.
“It was really kind of shocking and humbling,” Peterson said of the award. “This is just who I am as a person. I guess that’s the expectation I have for everybody – that we should all be giving back to our community and holding space for one another and lifting each other up. It’s really warmed my soul that people appreciate and recognize the work that I’ve been doing. It’s full-circle.”
