By Tom Latek
Kentucky Today
Kelly Craft, the new United States ambassador to Canada, said she was proud to serve in the tradition of the American experience and say yes to the nation’s call.
“It was the founders who left their farms and families to craft a new nation,” Craft said during a ceremony at the U.S. State Department. “It is the men and women who have shed blood, both home and abroad, when called to defend our nation.”
Craft, a native of Glasgow, said being named ambassador to Canada is a profound honor.
“Having been blessed in so many ways, this is an opportunity for me to give back to our great nation, to contribute in a small way to an unfolding chapter of our history.”
Kelly Craft is flanked by Vice-President Mike Pence, left, and her husband Joe Craft at a State Department ceremony last week.
She told the gathering that she can’t promise every day is going to be perfect.
“Friends don’t always agree. That’s also true of allies and trading partners. The world is complicated and unpredictable, but I can promise each of you this: I will lead every day with a servant’s heart.”
Craft said service every day both men and women citizens make a difference in the United States.
“It is the thousands of acts of civic duty performed at school boards, town hall meetings,” she said. “It is the citizen who sits on a jury and casts a vote. Together, we hold in trust the greatest experiment in representative democracy the world has ever known.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife, Secretary of Transportation chairman Elaine Chou, Gov. Matt Bevin and his family and, most importantly for Craft, 28 family members were in attendance.
“I can’t recall an occasion that has drawn together our family,” she said. “There is nothing more important than family and I am so grateful you are here.”
Vice-President Mike Pence administered an oath in a swearing-in ceremony.
Craft and her husband, Joe, are moving to Ottawa in a few weeks, when she will begin her duties.
Craft heads Kelly G. Knight, LLC, a Lexington-based business advisory firm. Craft has also been on the Salvation Army board of directors and on the board of the Center for Rural Development, a nonprofit dedicated to economic progress in rural Kentucky.
She is a co-founder of the Craft Academy for Science and Mathematics at Morehead State University and is a member of the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees, her alma mater.
Her husband is the chief executive officer of Alliance Resource Partners, a large Kentucky coal producer.
