Every year, the Friends of South organization – made up of parents and community members who have a common goal to raise money to support South students and staff – selects new inductees for the Axe Hall of Fame. They do this to celebrate the accomplishments of South alumni and inspire students by showing them examples of dedication, teamwork, and success. It helps us to recognize the amazing alumni achievement in the arts, academics, business, public service, athletic achievement, and coaching that has helped form the history and culture of South Eugene High School. These people are community leaders who represent the dedication, character, and achievements of the highest levels at South. 

Saturday, Feb. 22, will mark the 13th year of the event and will include this year’s banquet at the ceremony. It will be a night full of fun, including a reception, a silent auction, entertainment, and a dinner starting at 6 p.m. Friends of South will be honoring alumni and raising money to support South Eugene High School. This year they have a goal to raise $25,000, and so far they have raised $16,494. The Axe Hall of Fame hopes to inspire students with the many accomplishments of alumni and raise money for different needs across the school. In efforts to fundraise, sponsored tables will be available to people and directed to the club or team of people’s choice. 
By Sofia Bell

South Eugene High School is hosting the 13th annual Hall of Fame dinner and fundraiser to honor alumni and raise money to support the school on Feb. 22. One of the 2025 inductees is Brian O’Kelley, who is being honored for his success in business. O’Kelley is the co-founder and former CEO of AppNexus and the founder and CEO of Scopes, a company focused on reducing the environmental impact of Al. But his career all started at South, where he was a student in IHS. He played basketball, did track, played the clarinet, and started a computer-selling business in his senior year. 

“My senior year I started a business selling leftover computers from the IHS computer lab with a bunch of people from my basketball team,” O’Kelley said. “And we made enough money to start another business, which was a web design business, back when websites were the cutting edge.”

O’Kelley graduated from South in 1995 and ended up going to Princeton where he continued building websites for people.

“I think that’s pretty cool, [that] I was able to start a little business in my friend’s garage as a senior at South. [It] kickstarted my career as an internet entrepreneur and I’m still an internet entrepreneur 30 years later,” he said.

When asked what accomplishment he was most proud of, O’Kelley said he was proud of accidentally inventing the ad exchange, a virtual marketplace where publishers and advertisers can trade ad inventory. 

“The online ad exchange auctions every ad on the internet in the blink of an eye. So almost every ad you see on a website uses technology I invented,” said O’Kelley. 

The ad exchange is a popular, successful, hundred billion dollar industry that O’Kelley created. But that’s not the part he’s most proud of.

“When I started this whole thing we had to drop a cookie on the browser to make it work — cookies sort of track you across the internet. So I had to name it and I named it ‘anj’ because my daughter’s name is Anjali,” O’Kelley explained. “So I have put my daughter’s name on every single computer in the world.”

At his last company, O’Kelley had five South graduates working for him — four friends from his high school basketball team and his little sister, who graduated in 1999.

“It [was] like a little snippet of Eugene,” O’Kelley said.

O’Kelley lives in Brooklyn Heights, New York, and misses Oregon every day. 

“I miss the smell of the moist air [and] I miss the mountains. Like knowing that any direction you look there’s some range or butte that you can look at. I miss the chill, kind people. It just feels like a community,” O’Kelley said. “And I still kinda act like an Oregonian here in Brooklyn. Some things don’t change.”

O’Kelley is excited to come back to Eugene for the Hall of Fame fundraiser. When asked what his favorite memories of South were, he described the friendly and accepting community.

“When I was there, Eugene was the most progressive place and Springfield had just passed [an] anti-gay ordinance. And [then in] class there would be two girls holding hands and then next to them would be a guy with a pin that was for the measure — but they were friends,” O’Kelley recalled. “They were on totally different sides of these incredibly important issues, but they were friends with each other. One kid in my class, his parents were in the timber industry, and another kid in my class literally went to jail every week or two because they chained themself to trees — but they were friends.

“I look at our politics today and how horrible it is in this country, we’re so red vs blue,” O’Kelley reflected. “I think that’s something really special about Eugene: the ability to have people who are so different and have opposing views get along or at least see the humanity behind those different views.”

O’Kelley is looking forward to the Hall of Fame dinner and fundraiser. 

“I’m really excited to come [to South] in a couple weeks, I want to check it out,” he said.

Read more about Brian O’Kelley on the Friends of South website.

Article by Maya Robershaw