Kelly Lucas is what IBJ Media likes to call a “retread” — returning to the Indiana Lawyer in 2010 after serving for five years as the director of communications at Bishop Chatard High School in Indianapolis. Kelly serves as editor and publisher of the newspaper, balancing daily editorial responsibilities with the public relations aspects of publishing.

Kelly grew up in Anderson, Ind., and graduated from Ball State University in 1983 with degrees in journalism and political science. After working for several years on the media staff of the Indiana Senate Majority Caucus, she moved to Chicago and spent the next couple of years traveling to just about every state capital in the U.S. as a public affairs specialist with a national insurance trade association. But as they say, babies change everything, and the birth of her daughter in 1989 motivated her to embark on a freelance career – a move that resulted in her association with the Indiana Lawyer. Today, she has worked every schedule imaginable with IL — part-time, full-time, home-office, and freelance — and served in almost every editorial capacity: reporter, focus editor, managing editor, and now editor and publisher.

Kelly and her husband Dan celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary in 2012, the same week they hosted their daughter’s wedding. Her two sons, one in his final year of high school and the other a Purdue Boilermaker, along with Dan and Eli, a 7-year-old lab retriever mix who doesn’t realize he is no longer a puppy, keep her dance card full. While she has never been a juggler in the literal sense, she embraces on a daily basis the effort to “keep all the balls in the air.”