From 2004: Ambition in pastel pumps

This story was originally published on May 2, 2004.

Kelly Boyd’s name, like her life, floats to the surface like fresh cream.

As in, you should meet Kelly Boyd. Or, do you know Kelly Boyd? Or, Kelly Boyd could help you with this.

Her presence continues to grow in the fluid financial, political and social circles that constitute Philadelphia’s power axis.

In a relatively brief period, Fleet Bank senior vice president Gerard Cuddy heard Boyd’s counsel praised by three business leaders, “one of whom doesn’t take advice from anyone.” He was curious to meet her. “I just assumed she was this matriarch on Rittenhouse Square.”

Boyd, most emphatically, is not.

She teeters past Rittenhouse Square in towering lavender pumps and power pastel Chanel, size 2. She’s 37, armed with a law degree, a master’s in government administration, and considerable ambition. Bussing strangers, calling acquaintances darling, Boyd is impossible to ignore.

Her nine-year-old boutique firm, KB Consultants, specializes in public and community relations, as well as marketing, but Boyd’s core competency may be strategic thinking, using her ever-expanding and overlapping nexus of friends to achieve her goals.

“I want us to be the McKinsey of PR,” she says, referring to the global business-consulting firm. With her husband, Patrick Sylvester, she’s launching a regional recruiting firm specializing in midlevel placement.

The mother of three girls under age 7, Frances still in diapers, Boyd works every day, even on monthly vacations — yes, monthly — to Maui or Nevis or skiing Copper Mountain. Boyd practices Pilates three times a week, attends myriad charitable functions, and keeps standing Friday date nights with Sylvester, who is an entrepreneur and executive recruiter and CEO of Banister International.

“It’s hard for women to have it all, but I think they can enjoy it all,” says Boyd, who is writing a book on the subject, tentatively titled Don’t Screw Up, Ladies.

Together for a dozen years, Boyd and Sylvester are so close that it’s hard to say where their businesses — now five between them — end and their personal lives begin. Inevitably, vacations involve business, and philanthropic events are for clients. The dream is persistent.

“It’s a true partnership,” she says. “We’re a team, in every sense.”

Sylvester says, “Kelly’s always been an overachiever. She’s just hard-wired that way.”

Together, they have a five-year plan delineating personal and professional goals, personal wealth, social and philanthropic aspirations, the children. It’s a 17-page PowerPoint presentation, which Sylvester updates and revises on vacation.

“We’re both risk takers,” she says.

She sits in her exquisitely appointed Delancey Place townhouse, where orchids and spring blooms abound; it’s an art deco dream in ecru satin with sizable pieces of modern art. The art deco is her enthusiasm; the art, his. “You’ll have to ask him who these paintings are by.”

Presumably, the children are somewhere in the four-story home, but the place is hushed, serene and spotless. A tiered tea tray with Miel chocolates and crustless sandwiches has been set out by the couple’s personal assistant.

She doesn’t cook, and Sylvester prefers she not drive the spotless company Mercedes. Her life is assisted by a full-time nanny, an after-school babysitter, and other help.

Boyd’s jewelry is serious and large, inducing sunglasses. Her clothing is all good — Chanel, Oscar de la Renta, Carolina Herrera — and of this season, purchased in Manhattan and Florida. Her children are dressed in the kind of fine dress clothing 1960s society mothers purchased at Best & Co. Despite the busy career and outward effervescence, Boyd exhibits an old-world elegance, suggesting a life swathed in refined splendor, which makes her seem more venerable than her age.

Frankly, she’s the kind of woman who tends to live elsewhere, like on Park Avenue in New York.

KB Consultants’ 18 clients include a hair salon, stationer, restaurants, hotel, developer and Fleet Bank — Cuddy signed up with Boyd soon after they met at the Academy Ball — and nine pro-bono accounts. She advises them on everything from publicity to what philanthropies their companies should support, even helping some executives dress for black-tie affairs. Boyd’s intention is to guide clients through the shoals of press, marketing, business and charity, all aspects that shape image and confer prestige and power.

The staff of five associates and three interns is a reflection of the boss, all female, petite, pretty. “Yes, I’m a Kelly clone,” admits Dotty Giordano, a former Manhattan beauty editor. “It took her minutes to hire me. She’s an inspiration, as well as a big sister.”

The small warren of offices is decorated with fragrant Tocca candles, flowers, and children’s playtoys next to Boyd’s desk. Staff members refer to themselves as “the girls.” What here is daily attire would be other people’s Saturday best. There are no dress-down Fridays. Few people have ever seen Boyd in jeans.

Underestimating Boyd as a glam publicist, a G-rated version of Sex and the City’s Samantha Jones, would be wrong. She has a backbone of steel. “I love representing the financial industry,” says Boyd, after pitching a major bank account, which she wants to lock in for a couple of years. “What I really want now as a client is a law firm.”

Jennifer Barton, a close friend and client, says that’s no surprise. “The closer you work to money, the more you make,” says Barton, media relations director for L—3 Communications, an aerospace company. “We’re both athletic, high achievers. We’re successful and driven people.”

Boyd was raised in Lower Gwynedd, the eldest of three children, a graduate of Gwynedd-Mercy Academy. Her parents divorced. She remains close to her father, who ran a scrap-metal business, traveling with him on vacations. “He knew what our strengths were, and taught us to focus on those things. He taught me a lot along the way, taking me along on business. He taught me how to be around entrepreneurs. Nothing scared him.” She declines to discuss her mother.

Boyd has been politically active since college, for candidates of both parties. She hosted a fund-raiser for John Street and is close to his wife, Naomi Post, and supports Electricians Union president John Dougherty. “I love Johnny Doc,” she says, though envisioning ladylike Boyd with rough-hewn Dougherty creates an odd picture.

“Kelly was just out of college when she worked for me on John Heinz’s third Senate race,” says her first boss, Patrick Killian, now Delaware County commerce director. “I was always teasing her about being in suits, never in jeans like the rest of us. She had success written all over and was indefatigable. She’d stick to the tasks and wasn’t shy about pushing people at the senior level.”

Boyd’s responsibilities included organizing press conferences for Heinz in front of the U.S. Capitol. “Sen. Specter approached the microphones, and I remember having to tell him, ‘This is Sen. Heinz’s press event, not yours.’ I was 22. It turned out to be no problem at all.”

After American University, Boyd went to Penn’s Fels Institute of Government and then Temple for law school. She loved politics, especially the press aspect, but was never quite sure about law.

Boyd worked through law school as a publicist, picking up clients like the hotel association. “Law school taught me a lot, but I was interested in family law and found I didn’t have the personality for it. I used to cry over my cases.” She finished school, and never practiced a day.

“I think law is difficult for women, but it gave me a terrific background for business,” Boyd says. Fleet Bank’s Cuddy says, “She gets this business cold, tossing out metrics, understanding client dimension, in addition to giving us clarity with sponsorship opportunities, advising us what boards to be on. That’s a huge part of my job. She’s also great at connecting us with people.”

Boyd has a coltish demeanor, as if her thinness comes as much from nervous energy as late-morning Pilates. It’s hard to imagine her at rest. She admits to having an “Irish temper.” She wants perfect in a world that rarely is. She works on the plane, meets potential accounts at galas. How much time did she take after the birth of each daughter? “You don’t want to know,” she says, flashing a look that suggests hours, not days.

It’s work looking as good as she does, staying this current with what’s going on in the city. She gets her hair and nails done at Pierre & Carlo, a client. She eats at Bliss, McCormick & Schmick’s, 20 Manning, clients all. Every place becomes an office.

“Everybody notices her,” says friend Eugene Block, a founder of Rosenbluth Travel, a generation her senior. “You can’t be oblivious to her. A lot of people who look like Kelly slide and glide and let these natural assets take them through life,” he says. “Kelly’s much too driven and entrepreneurial for this kind of thing.”

Along the way, Boyd and Sylvester have developed detractors, not one of whom would speak on the record. Her home, purchased in 2000, underwent major construction that resulted in five lawsuits and countersuits. Workmen on the house protested conditions and payment, carrying placards in Rittenhouse Square, opposite her office.

Earlier this year, Boyd resigned from representing Rittenhouse Row, a consortium of Center City businesses. The split was far from amicable.

Boyd’s a demanding boss, workdays spilling into evening events. “Our days are very long and exhausting,” says Giordano. Turnover at KB Consultants is high, though that’s common in public relations and among young professionals launching careers. “In nine years, I’ve only fired one person,” Boyd says.

That firing was done publicly by Sylvester in January. In loud, obscenity-laden language, he fired the employee in Smith & Wollensky, a event witnessed by many diners, which quickly became the talk of the square, not the best move for a public-relations executive. This incident was not part of the plan.

Boyd talks about her book in progress. “I really enjoy women. If you’re not a ‘girl’s girl,’ you can’t go past the first page. I really enjoy women of all ages, and this is a book about women enjoying every part of their life, which I don’t feel every woman does. I’ve enjoyed life too much, and I’ve done it by focusing on how not to make certain mistakes with relationships, especially with your significant other.”

Last year, Sylvester bought Banister from CDI, the large, public executive staffing and consulting corporation, and took it private. They plan to redo the house. Boyd has the book, as well as the new company. They have plans to travel even more with their daughters, while they’re still young.

“Patrick, quite frankly, has done this all on his own,” she says. “We are very effective in our time management. We have wonderful people who work with us, who are with us forever.”

And in five years? “I don’t see KB Consultants being a $10 million business,” Sylvester says. “It’s too high quality to grow superhuge and globalize. I see Kelly getting into other businesses and other endeavors she finds interesting, and platforming her work.”

Boyd adds: “We’ll be guiding the board of whatever we run, and hire good people to run them. We’re risk-taskers. We’re concerned with how you grow your wealth. We’re busy growing his companies, staying focused on our companies so that later we can give more money away. You have to have great wealth to be on boards. We’ll do more in the future.”

She’s serious, as she often is, but delighted to talk about the future. “Happiness and fun are critical to me. Everyone who knows me, knows that I have to have fun, with my clients and home life.”

Even if something catastrophic were to happen to their businesses, Boyd seems prepared for that, too.

Looking content on her eggshell damask settee, she smiles. “Then we would just start up all over again.”

This story was originally published on May 2, 2004.