Biography

Kelly Candaele is a writer, filmmaker, teacher and elected official in Los Angeles.   For the past fifteen years Mr. Candaele has written extensively for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Irish America magazine and the International Herald Tribune.   His journalistic work has focused primarily on the conflict in Northern Ireland, Los Angeles political developments, history,  culture and baseball.  In addition to Northern Ireland he has worked as a journalist in Great Britain, Brazil, Sweden, Cuba, Spain, Australia and Vietnam..  Mr. Candaele has lectured at Hebrew University in Jerusalem about conflict resolution, and has been a lecturer in writing and politics at Occidental College in Los Angeles.   He is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Chico. 

Mr. Candaele has produced and directed a number of documentary films. His documentary film A League of Their Own, about his mother’s years as a professional baseball player in the 1940s.  He wrote the story for the Columbia Pictures feature film about the women’s league which stared Tom Hanks and Madonna.  He also produced and wrote an award-winning documentary on the life of assassinated Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, which was narrated by actor Paul Newman. Mr. Candaele’s most recent documentary explores the aftermath of the Northern Ireland peace agreement of 1998. The film is titled When Hope & History Rhymed, from the poem by Irish Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney.  He is currently working on a documentary on the rivalry between Spanish soccer teams Real Madrid and Barcelona.

In 1996 Mr. Candaele ran for and was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District. He is one of seven members who oversee the nine-college district that enrolls over 130,000 students a year. He served as President of the Board in 2000 and again in 2004. 

Mr. Candaele has worked for many years with organized labor. He started as an organizer with the Air Traffic Controllers Association, the successor organization to PATCO, which President Reagan busted in 1981. He later worked for the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO) as a policy analyst and political organizer. He also taught labor history and politics for several years in the Los Angeles Trade Tech College Labor Center, a program designed to build leadership capacity for rank and file union members.

Mr. Candaele obtained a Masters Degree in Psychology and Counseling from California State University, Chico in 1979 and studied European History at the University of California, Santa Barbara.