Kelly graduated from the United States Air Force Academy with Honors in 1987 with a BS in Astronautical Engineering, then graduated from George Washington University in 1989 with an MS in Astronautics.  She served 20 years in the US Air Force as a pilot.  During that time she was a T-38 Instructor Pilot, flew world-wide military transport and combat missions as an Aircraft Commander in the C-141 and C-17 (including deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan), and graduated from US Air Force Test Pilot School.  She finished her Air Force career as the Squadron Commander of the 418^th Flight Test Squadron at Edwards AFB, CA where she oversaw test programs in the C-17, C-130J, C-5, HH-60, CV-22, and KC-135.

        After her Air Force service, Kelly flew as an experimental Test Pilot for NASA at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center (now renamed the Armstrong Flight Research Center) where she flew flight test on the SOFIA project (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) - a 747SP modified to carry the largest airborne observatory in the world.

        Kelly then moved on to work as a test pilot for the Boeing Company at the C-17 production facility in Long Beach, CA and at Boeing Field in Seattle, WA.  During her time at Boeing, she flew flight test of the C-17, KC-767, P-8, B-787, B-737 and the KC-46, and was the Company’s Chief Test Pilot for the C-17.

         Kelly is now working as a test pilot for Virgin Galactic, based out of Spaceport America in New Mexico.  She fly’s VMS Eve (carrier aircraft for Spaceship 2) and was the chief test pilot for Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne program (a 747-400 modified to carry the LauncherOne rocket which is designed to put small satellites in space) from the beginning of the program through the first successful launch.  She has flown over 50 different aircraft and logged more than 7,000 hours of flight time.