Faculty & Staff Directory

Bio

Kelly Trager is a business educator, attorney, entrepreneur, and advocate for arts and culture. She started at Neeley in 2021 as an Assistant Professor of Professional Practice and lead instructor for the Entrepreneurial and Business Regulatory Environment course. Professor Trager also teaches Entrepreneurial NIL, serves on the Faculty Senate, and is on the nationwide roster of Fulbright Specialists.  Prior to joining TCU, Professor Trager has taught at College of Charleston, SMU, UT Arlington, and Pratt Institute, where she continues to lead graduate courses in the Design Management and Arts and Cultural Management Programs.

As a former professional modern dancer, Kelly saw a need for attorneys who understood creative and entrepreneurial ventures and the need to protect creative property. She received her JD from Brooklyn Law School, where she was awarded the Ortner Prize for Achievement in Entertainment Law. Kelly began her legal career at New York’s Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts – a prestigious arts-related legal aid organization providing legal services and advocacy for artists – where she served as a staff attorney and director of development. After VLA, she founded her own law firm, KKT Law, a practice that serves the legal and business needs of individuals in creative and entrepreneurial ventures, as well as nonprofit and for-profit arts and entertainment companies.

Kelly teaches and gives talks and seminars in the areas of Entrepreneurial Law, Entrepreneurial NIL, Intellectual Property Law, Understanding Creativity, Business Strategy, Dispute Resolution, Nonprofit Corporate Formation and Governance, Entertainment Law, Film Production, Legal Issues in the Arts, Arts Management, Arts Marketing, and International Law and the Arts. She has served on the boards of numerous nonprofit art organizations; worked in fundraising and development, and served as a grant reviewer for state art funding organizations, art reviewer for numerous publications, and contributor to Artrepreneur. She was the co-owner and founder of Trager Contemporary, an art gallery in Charleston, South Carolina and is a co-founder and current CEO of Artflly, an art-tech company. Trager received her B.A., with distinction, in Literature from Boston University. She was a Kosciuszko Fellow at Jagellonian University in Krakow, Poland.

Education

• JD, Brooklyn Law School
• BA, Boston University

Areas of Expertise/Research

• Legal Issues in Business
• Arts and Cultural Law and Business Management
• Business Strategy