Kelly was raised in Washington, D.C. She is a graduate of the National Cathedral School[1] after which she attended Columbia University where she received a B.A.
[2][3] After school, she worked for Time magazine and the New York Observer where she wrote a weekly residential real-estate column, "Manhattan Transfers.
"[2] she then worked for The Wall Street Journal for ten years as an investigative journalist and then in 2010 she was hired by CNBC as an on-air reporter.
[2] Kelly is also the author, with Robin Pogrebin, of The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation with a publishing date in September 2019 from Portfolio Books, a division of Penguin Random House.
Before publication, the Times published a widely criticised[4] essay adapted from the book that primarily addressed accusations about an incident with Deborah Ramirez and another incident alleged by Max Stier, both of which occurred at Yale.