The son of a career Army officer, Kelvin Sellers was born in North Carolina and lived a good portion of his childhood in Germany. He received advanced degrees in accounting and taxation from the University of Texas at Arlington.
Deloitte hired Sellers in 1998 in its tax department handling corporate compliance matters.
“I worked with a lot of lawyers and being around them ignited a fire to take the LSAT and go to law school,” he says.
Two decades later, Sellers is the general counsel at Dallas-based Interstate Batteries, a privately-held distributor that supplies batteries to about 200,000 dealers, employs 1,500 people and generates about $1.8 billion in revenues annually.
During the past decade, Sellers has handled partnership agreements with Interstate Batteries’ 200 retail stores, worked on sponsorship contracts with NASCAR driver Kyle Busch, engineered the company’s 19 percent acquisition of California-based Aqua Metals and was involved in Interstate Batteries’ expansion into South America and China.
“To know that we, as lawyers, play a critical role in the company’s efforts to grow and succeed is something our team takes pride in,” Sellers told The Texas Lawbook in an interview in 2017. “The job calls upon a lot of different areas of expertise, and it is quite a challenge every day to work on strategic matters with our leaders.
“Probably 60 percent of what we do is offer advice on the business that goes beyond the normal legal advice,” he says. “It is so much fun to use my background and my experience to be a problem-solver for the company.”
The Texas Lawbook and the Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter are pleased to announce that Sellers is a finalist for the 2018 Outstanding Corporate Counsel’s General Counsel of the Year Award for a Small Legal Department. The winners will be announced at the official awards event on Thursday, Jan. 24, at the George W. Bush Institute.
“Mr. Sellers is a servant-leader who not only represents the interests of Interstate Batteries exceptionally well and with astute business acumen, he tries to ensure that he engages diverse outside counsel – women and multicultural attorneys – to assist Interstate Batteries with its legal needs,” Camisha Simmons, managing member of Simmons Legal, wrote in nominating Sellers for the honor.
Sellers graduated from Columbia University Law School in 2005 and went to work as an associate at Bickel & Brewer, a Dallas law firm known for its attack dog tactics. He represented clients in various fraud and breach of contract cases.
In 2007, he lateraled to global law firm Jones Day, where he practiced in the firm’s state and local tax law section. Nearly two years into the job, Sellers thought he wanted something different.
“I put my name and resume out on Monster and got a hit from Interstate’s tax department,” he says. “I love the law and the experience of working with administrative agencies. It was clear right away that Interstate was a place I could pave my own path.”
But there was a problem.
“Kelvin wanted to join our legal department, but we didn’t have an opening at the time,” says Interstate Batteries Chief Legal Officer Chris Willis.
But Sellers proved his worth in the tax department and was quickly moved into the legal department in 2010 as the deputy general counsel and promoted to general counsel in May 2016.
Willis says Sellers fits perfectly with Interstate Batteries’ motto: “He’s outrageously dependable.”