For Amber Kelleher-Andrews, CEO of Kelleher International Professional Matchmaking Services, success means making the world a better place — one match at a time.
Together with family and close-knit staff, she plays cupid to the upper echelons of Hollywood stars, professional athletes, and corporate tycoons. An impressive 87 percent of her clients find love, and thousands go on to wedded bliss.
Today, however, her driving purpose is to leverage the art of matchmaking to bring about good on a whole new level.
Kelleher International blazes the trail for commercial matchmaking in America
Amber Kelleher-Andrews is the long-standing CEO of Kelleher International Matchmaking Services, but her mother, Jill Kelleher, is the company’s owner and founder. “My mom is my boss,” Kelleher-Andrews laughs. “She started this company in 1986 and is still very much a part of it.”
Looking back, Kelleher-Andrews can’t remember a time when her mother wasn’t making matches.
“My mom has a knack for putting people together. Friends and family know to go to her for relationship advice. I remember her ringing a bell at matchmaking dinner parties to let people know it was time to swap seats and meet someone new.” Over the years, her party events turned into quite a large and impressive group of eligible men and women.
In the mid-’80s, Jill Kelleher obtained an inheritance amounting to $7,000. As a single mom, she considered stashing the money for future rent payments. She also considered blowing it on a Hawaiian getaway with her daughter. In the end, she did neither.
“My mom bet everything on using her gift to make a difference in the lives of people around her,” Kelleher-Andrews recalls. “She put an ad for Kelleher International Professional Matchmaking Services in the San Francisco Chronicle and bought a new-fangled cellphone as long as her arm.”
When that cell phone rang for the first time, Jill Kelleher realized she had a matchmaking company with only one client. She solved her first business dilemma by pairing her client with a great match from her dinner party rolodex.
At the time, commercial matchmaking firms were unheard of in America. “When people heard our company name, they thought we made matchbook covers,” Kelleher-Andrews says. “My mom started something amazing, beautiful, and entirely new. I watched her build the company one match at a time. And when I went to college, she kept me posted on each new client.”
In her twenties, Kelleher-Andrews was chasing down a filmmaking career. To earn extra cash, she took assignments from her mother. Her side hustle in matchmaking lasted only a short time.
“The first time I spoke to a client, I got the matchmaking bug,” remarks Kelleher-Andrews. “In no time at all, my mom and I split the territory of San Francisco and LA as a mother-daughter matchmaking team.”
With one foot still in the entertainment business, Kelleher-Andrews became a relationship expert on national television programs such as Entertainment Tonight, Extra, and NBC News. “This was long before the internet,” says Kelleher-Andrews. “At the time, television was king. I became the firm’s CEO and opened our services to the entire United States.”
Responding to the global pandemic teaches Kelleher International a valuable lesson
As the world plunged into sudden lockdown in March 2020, Kelleher-Andrews and her mother ran into what they believed was an insurmountable obstacle. Kelleher International’s roots stretch back to a time before texts, emails, and online dating apps.
Even in the new millennium, they preferred to keep things simple. The firm’s matchmakers scheduled face-to-face meetings to get a feel for new clients, and first-time dates generally took place across candlelight tables in swanky restaurants.
“When in-person meetings were taken off the table, we had to reinvent our company entirely,” says Kelleher-Andrews. “At first, we thought our business would need to go on pause. When we took steps to adapt, we realized the opposite was true.”
Nervously, Kelleher-Andrews explored and implemented new technology to allow her staff and her clients to meet virtually. Instead of the firm’s calls drying up, they multiplied. In 2020, the company went on to log its best year ever, and the following year, strong revenue growth continued.
“We discovered that as long as we kept an open mind, we could thrive,” Kelleher-Andrews remarks.
“Incredible clients have always been the key to our success. The world was upside down, but our clients were still the same emotionally available, authentic, sophisticated, and communicative people as before. They craved connection, and they were fine with that taking place over Zoom.”
The real meaning of success for Amber Kelleher-Andrews
In 2013, Kelleher-Andrews received an invitation from Sir Richard Branson inviting her to join him and a select group of business leaders on his private island.
His mission: to leverage influence as a force for good. Though flattered, Kelleher-Andrews secretly fretted that her family business would not fit in with the other corporations and global brands on the guest list.
Branson quickly put her at ease. He explained that her environmentally-friendly company set an example by transforming lives through connection and long-term relationships.
Together, Branson and Kelleher-Andrews brainstormed a world where every business valued people and planet ahead of profit margins. She left Necker Island with a role as his foundation’s newest board member, and with a conviction that she had the power to leverage real change in the world.
“Everyone has a gift to give,” explains Kelleher-Andrews. “Money, power, fame, talent, and time can all be forces for good. I realized my deeper passion when I thought about what that meant for me and my company. I am a natural matchmaker, so I began matching people with purpose.”
Today, by matching a person with a foundation, Kelleher-Andrews turns the daily grind into a legacy. She teaches entrepreneurs, entertainers, and executives the joy of building people and planet into their profit margins.
In one successful match, she linked a filmmaker with three people who wanted to shine a light on human trafficking. The resulting documentary raised awareness and exceeded everyone’s expectations.
“It’s infinitely rewarding to match one person’s dream to the resources that make it a reality,” Kelleher-Andrews concludes. “There is no limit to the good we can do when we unleash the power of joy and love in our lives.”
If you would like to get in touch with Amber Kelleher-Andrews or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin Page