Kelly Loeffler

Kelly Lynn Loeffler ( LEF-lər; born November 27, 1970) is an American businesswoman and politician who has served since February 2025 as the 28th administrator of the Small Business Administration. A member of the Republican Party, she served as a United States senator from Georgia from 2020 to 2021.

Loeffler was formerly the chief executive officer (CEO) of Bakkt, a subsidiary of commodity and financial service provider Intercontinental Exchange, of which her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, is CEO. She is a former co-owner of the Atlanta Dream of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA).

Brian Kemp, the Republican governor of Georgia, appointed Loeffler to the U.S. Senate in December 2019 after Senator Johnny Isakson resigned for health reasons. Loeffler proved a consistent ally of President Donald Trump on key votes during her time in the U.S. Senate. Loeffler ran in the 2020 Georgia U.S. Senate special election, seeking to hold the seat until January 2023. She finished in the top two in the November 3 election, advancing to a runoff with Democrat Raphael Warnock held on January 5, 2021, which she lost. After the November 2020 election, Loeffler claimed that there had been unspecified failures in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. She later announced her intention to object to the certification of the Electoral College results in Congress. Loeffler ultimately withdrew her objection and voted for certification in January 2021.

On December 4, 2024, Trump announced he would nominate Loeffler to be administrator of the Small Business Administration during his second presidency. On February 19, 2025, Loeffler was confirmed to the position by the Senate.

Kelly Lynn Loeffler was born on November 27, 1970, in Bloomington, Illinois, to Don and Lynda (née Munsell) Loeffler, and raised on her family's corn and soybean farm in Stanford, Illinois. She has a brother, Brian. In 1988, she graduated from Olympia High School in Stanford, where she was in the marching band, ran cross-country and track, and played varsity basketball.

In 1992, Loeffler graduated with a Bachelor of Science in marketing from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Gies College of Business, where she was a member of the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority. After college, she worked for Toyota as a district account manager. In 1999, she graduated with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in international finance and marketing from DePaul University's Kellstadt Graduate School of Business. She financed her graduate school tuition by mortgaging land inherited from her grandparents.

After earning her MBA, Loeffler worked for Citibank, William Blair & Company, and the Crossroads Group. In 2002, she joined Intercontinental Exchange, a commodity and financial service provider, in investor relations. She married the firm's CEO, Jeffrey Sprecher, in 2004. Loeffler was eventually promoted to senior vice president of investor relations and corporate communications. In 2018, she became the chief executive officer (CEO) of Bakkt, a subsidiary of Intercontinental Exchange.

In 2010, Loeffler bought a minority stake in the Atlanta Dream of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). In 2011, she and Mary Brock bought the team from Kathy Betty. Loeffler took an active role in the team, arranging her travel schedule to attend all games and often meeting with head coach Michael Cooper during halftime to analyze the first half of the game. Due in part to her stance on the Black Lives Matter movement, and the resulting criticism expressed by many players on the Dream roster and within the league, in February 2021 Loeffler sold her stake in the team.

When Loeffler left Intercontinental Exchange to join the Senate, the company awarded her over $9 million of financial assets. A spokesperson for Loeffler said Loeffler "left millions in equity compensation behind" by joining the Senate.

According to OpenSecrets, as of December 2019, Loeffler and her husband, Jeffrey Sprecher, had donated $3.2 million to political committees. Ninety-seven percent of these donations went to Republicans, and three percent to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Debbie Stabenow, and Georgia congressman David Scott (GA–13), who received $10,200. Loeffler donated $750,000 to Restore Our Future, a super PAC supporting former governor Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign. The National Republican Senatorial Committee received $247,500 from Loeffler and Sprecher.

In May 2020, Loeffler's husband gave $1 million to a Trump 2020 reelection super PAC, his largest federal political donation to date.

Loeffler considered seeking the Republican nomination in the 2014 United States Senate election in Georgia but ultimately passed on the race because of Intercontinental Exchange's pending acquisition of the New York Stock Exchange.

On August 28, 2019, sitting Georgia senator Johnny Isakson announced that he would resign at the end of the year, citing health reasons. On December 4, 2019, in accordance with Georgia law, Governor Kemp appointed Loeffler to fill Isakson's unexpired term until the next regularly scheduled statewide election in November 2020. Kemp traveled to Washington to explain why he wanted to appoint Loeffler instead of Trump's choice, Representative Doug Collins, who helped lead the House opposition to Trump's impeachment. The choice of Loeffler angered many Georgia conservatives who had supported Collins.

On January 6, 2020, Loeffler was sworn in to the Senate. She became the second female to represent Georgia in the U.S. Senate. The first was Rebecca Latimer Felton, also the first female U.S. senator, who served a symbolic one-day term in 1922. The appointment was valid until the runoff election scheduled for January 5, 2021, because no candidate in the November 2020 election received a majority of the vote.

Loeffler characterized herself as among the most conservative Republican in the Senate and allied herself with President Trump. During her tenure in the Senate, Loeffler sponsored 57 bills and cosponsored 210. She voted in line with President Trump's stated position 80% of the time.

Loeffler supported Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Loeffler opposed abortion and supported anti-abortion legislation. The anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List initially opposed Loeffler's appointment, but endorsed her in the 2020 election. Loeffler donated portions of her Senate salary to anti-abortion pregnancy centers and an anti-LGBTQ adoption agency.

Following her tenure in the U.S. Senate, Loeffler founded Greater Georgia, an organization that planned to register likely conservative voters in Georgia, expand conservative messaging infrastructure, and advocate for changes to voting laws to increase election security. Loeffler personally invested at least $1 million in the organization.

In July 2023, Loeffler joined the board of directors of PublicSquare, an online marketplace marketed towards conservatives.

During the 2024 United States presidential election, Loeffler was a major donor to Donald Trump, having contributed more than $4.9 million to his re-election effort.

On December 4, 2024, President-elect Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Loeffler for Administrator of the Small Business Administration in the second Trump administration.

Loeffler appeared before the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship on January 29, 2025. The committee advanced her nomination in a 12–7 vote on February 5, 2025. On February 19, 2025, the U.S. Senate confirmed Loeffler's nomination with a 52–46 vote.

Loeffler was sworn in as the 28th Administrator of the Small Business Administration on February 20, 2025.

During the 2025 United States federal government shutdown, Loeffler became as administrator of the SBA subject of a Hatch Act complaint filed by the Public Citizen watchdog group alleging that Loeffler engaged in "electioneering" while on duty.

In 2004, Loeffler married Jeffrey Sprecher, the founder and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange and chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. They live in Tuxedo Park, Atlanta, in a $10.5 million, 15,000-square-foot (1,400 m2) estate, bought in 2013 in what was then the most expensive residential real estate transaction ever recorded in Atlanta. They have four additional homes and a condo. In November 2020, Newsweek reported Loeffler's and Sprecher's combined net worth at $800 million, making her the wealthiest sitting U.S. senator at the time.