Duke Leadership Academy Scholars Profile

Chip Kyles

Title: Director of Workers' Compensation
Location:
Senior Management Area: Human Resources
Class Year: 2014

Bio:
Chip Kyles joined Duke University in March 2013 as Director of Workers' Compensation. His role includes oversight of Duke's self-insured, self-administered workers' compensation program as well as the unemployment compensation program. The Duke workers' compensation program is focused on providing timely and excellent medical care to employees who are injured on the job, and on enabling those injured employees to regain their productivity. The unemployment program provides for the payment of unemployment benefits for qualified former employees. Chip's prior career includes more than 11 years in private legal practice at Stuart Law Firm, PLLC in Raleigh, North Carolina. His primary practice areas were the representation of employers in workers' compensation claims and employment disputes, as well as insurance-related and commercial litigation. Chip also occasionally represented injured employees in workers' compensation claims with special merit. His practice kept him busy in the North Carolina Industrial Commission, civil courts, and the appellate courts. Chip is admitted to the practice of law in North Carolina, Virginia (inactive), and all federal district courts in North Carolina. In 1991, Chip graduated from North Carolina State University, where he majored in Communication with a minor in Business Management. After a successful retail management career at Pep Boys, Chip entered the University of North Carolina School of Law, from which he graduated with honors in 2001. At UNC Law, Chip was a member of the International Law Moot Court Team that won the 2001 United States championship and finished second overall in the World Round of the Manfred Lachs Space Law Competition. Chip was awarded the Best Oralist prize in both the U.S. and World Rounds. Chip's classmates at UNC Law elected him as a national member of The Order of Barristers. Chip and his wife have identical twin boys who are almost three years old. Away from work, Chip enjoys home improvement projects, tinkering on old cars, motorcycling, and collecting chess sets from around the world.