Kelly Luongo Loving Selected for Charlotte Business Journal’s ’40 Under 40’

Kelly Luongo Loving, an attorney with Robinson Bradshaw & Hinson, P.A., has been selected for the Charlotte Business Journal’s 18th annual ‘40 Under 40.’ Each year, this award helps recognize young professionals in the Charlotte area for exceptional leadership, as well as a long list of notable achievements and tireless contributions to the community.

Loving is a member of the firm’s corporate department, where her practice includes a range of commercial transactions, with a focus on mergers and acquisitions, private equity investments and general corporate law. She provides leadership and guidance for new associates, assisting them with their transition into the workplace while also overseeing training and workflow. Loving also helps lead diversity, mentoring and inclusion initiatives at Robinson Bradshaw, and is the firm’s representative to the Mecklenburg County Bar Association’s Charlotte Legal Diversity Clerkship program. She joined Robinson Bradshaw in 1999 and was named a shareholder in 2005.

Loving is credited with providing leadership for Villa Heights Elementary School, a high-performing magnet school as well as the school her children attend, throughout a pivotal and tumultuous period. As the vice president of the PTA there, she led lobbying efforts to keep the school open after Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools recommended its closure in 2008. In addition to organizing efforts to help restructure the PTA and a process for selecting a new principal, Loving now serves as a member of the School Leadership Team that guides school improvements and strategic plans that help keep this magnet school as a model of success in the CMS system.

In addition to a long list of community activities and achievements, Loving is an active member of the Charlotte arts community. She was selected to participate in the Arts & Science Council’s Cultural Leadership Training program, which evolved into her inclusion on the board of directors for Festival in the Park, the annual arts and cultural festival that draws more than 100,000 visitors to Freedom Park each year. As a board member, Loving worked on contract negotiations to establish the 1st Annual Kings Drive Art Walk, scheduled for April 16-17, 2011.

She also has been a member of the advisory board of First Presbyterian Church Child Development Center for four years, has served as a child custody advocate for the Council for Children’s Rights, taught Junior Achievement, tutored elementary school students and coached Little League T-ball.

Loving earned her law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law, where she was a member of the editorial board for the Virginia Journal of Environmental Law. She received her bachelor of arts from Duke University, where she graduated cum laude. Prior to joining Robinson Bradshaw, Loving practiced with the mergers and acquisitions group at Long, Aldridge & Norman LLP in the Atlanta, GA office.

Following her graduation from Duke, where she received a Navy ROTC scholarship, and prior to enrolling in law school, Loving was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy, serving on a the USS Supply, a fast combat ship and the first ship of its class to permit women to serve on board. As one of two women among a 600-person crew, Loving demonstrated natural leadership and was responsible for a division of 113 sailors that supplied battle groups with provisions while at sea.

Loving joins a list of current Robinson Bradshaw attorneys who have been named to the Business Journal’s ‘40 Under 40,’ including: Dianne Chipps Bailey, Louis A. Bledsoe, III, Jeffrey C. Hart, Mark W. Merritt, William K. Packard, Richard S. Starling, Angelique R. Vincent and Julian H. Wright, Jr.