Brad Keeler is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation.

He was raised in the northeast Oklahoma town of Bartlesville, which is located about 25 miles from the Kansas border. He was educated in the Bartlesville public-school system from kindergarten through grade 12. During the summer vacation months between grades 9 and 12, Brad worked as a ranch hand on a cattle ranch west of Bartlesville.

After high school, Brad enrolled at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, where he earned a B.A. in mathematics. After college graduation Brad entered the U.S. Navy OCS installation in Newport, RI, and after training was commissioned an ensign. After OCS he was ordered to a duty station aboard the USS Mahan (DLG-11), which was then assigned to the Pacific Fleet. During Brad's active-duty tenure, he made two tours to the Far East.

When his active-duty obligation to the Navy ended, he went to work in Houston, TX, for a marketer of petroleum products and oil production and then left for New York City to take a job with Lazard Freres, a Wall Street investment banking firm. He remained with Lazard and two of its affiliates for six plus years and then founded Copaquen Associates, Inc., a software development firm that produced analytical computer programs for various segments of the investment banking industry. Among its innovative work, Copaquen created some of the first commercially available programs that incorporated both linear and non-linear mathematical programming techniques for competitive bidding banking environments. Brad was president and owner of Copaquen until he retired in 2013.

In 1981, Brad married Margaret Madigan of New York City. They became parents of two daughters, Honor and Catherine. In 1990 Brad was elected as a director of the Association and served as its president from 1994 to 2005. From 2003 to 2019 he also served as a director of the Smithsonian' s GGHC National Museum of the American Indian, which is in New York City. He and Margaret currently reside in Marshallton, Pennsylvania.​
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