Kathelen Van Blarcum Amos is a native of Columbus, Georgia, and earned an undergraduate degree in political science from Emory University. She received her Juris Doctor degree from the University of Georgia and is a member of the Georgia and Texas bars.

After working two years in private practice she joined Aflac as a staff attorney in its legal department. Her work initially supported the claims and human resource areas, but expanded to include support for the corporate secretary and other corporate internal and litigation matters. She was promoted to deputy counsel in 1992, and retained that title for the duration of her 20-year career with Aflac. In addition to duties in the legal areas, she was made responsible for the company’s public and media relations, corporate philanthropy, shareholder services department, and in 1995, the corporate advertising. During her tenure, the company became the named sponsor of the Aflac Cancer Center and Blood Disorders Services at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and she helped launch the Aflac Duck advertising campaign. She was Aflac’s first female executive vice president, receiving that promotion in 2001. Since officially retiring from the company, she has remained the senior relationship advisor with the Aflac Cancer Center, and serves as president of the Aflac Foundation.

Having served in various leadership capacities on various non-profit boards, Kathelen launched a second professional endeavor by earning her nursing degree and becoming a registered nurse in 2012. Since that time she has worked in both inpatient and outpatient settings as an RN in the oncology field.

As chair of the University of Georgia School of Law Board of Visitors, she has endowed the Kathelen Amos Scholarship, contributed a lead gift to the law school renovation and helped initiate the Rebecca Hanner White Scholarship, named for the law school’s first woman dean who retired in 2015. She served as a member of the governor-appointed Georgia Cancer Coalition from 2002 to 2011, and as its chairman from 2009 to 2011. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of Emory University, The Emory Children’s Pediatric Research Center and the Columbus Museum. She is engaged with her husband Dan in philanthropic endeavors through a family foundation.

Her two daughters are Laura, a 2011 graduate of Davidson College currently pursuing a Masters in Social Work degree at the University of North Carolina, and Margaret, who is a senior at Princeton University. Her son John, a 2013 graduate of Washington and Lee, and a graduate student at the University of Georgia’s Odum School of Ecology, received his Masters in Science degree posthumously this past December after having passed away earlier that year. Friends and family established a fellowship in his name for a graduate student pursuing a career in freshwater ecology and conservation management.