As part of peace team work in several countries, she has traveled to Iraq twenty-six times, notably remaining in combat zones during the early days of both US–Iraq wars.

[5] She obtained her BA from Loyola University Chicago working a succession of night jobs to help cover tuition, including a stint on a meat-packing factory line which inspired her to become a lifelong vegetarian.

[7] A Jesuit professional development grant enabled her to travel to Nicaragua in 1985 and participate in a fast led by Foreign Minister Miguel D'Escoto against US-backed Contra activity.

[8] Returning to the US, she left St. Ignatius in 1986 in order to focus on activism[9] including two years as a teacher in Uptown's Prologue High School serving marginalized low-income youth.

Kelly helped organize and participated in several nonviolent direct action teams in war zones outside Iraq: Bosnia in December 1992 and August 1993, and Haiti in the summer of 1994.

[14][15] Between 1996 and 2003 Voices organized over seventy delegations to Iraq bringing food and medicine directly to Iraqi citizens in deliberate violation of both UN-imposed economic sanctions and US law.

[14] Voices work was chiefly focused on, but not exclusive to, Iraq: in April 2002 Kelly and her fellow activists, walking on foot and engaging in repeated negotiations with Israeli Defense Force officers, became the first internationals to visit the Jenin refugee camp after learning, while on peace team work in the West Bank, of the recent attack there and what she described as its heavy civilian toll after observing it first-hand during her time at West Bank.

Voices in the Wilderness was fined $20,000 by the US Treasury in 2003, which it refused to pay;[16] it was "charged with exporting unspecified goods or services, which a spokesman said was related to delivering medicines to Iraq several years ago.

[18] With Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Kelly carried on extensive activism outside of Iraq, most recently focusing on solidarity work in Kabul alongside a community of Afghan peace activists, support for the protest movement against naval base construction on South Korea's Jeju Island, and multiple visits to Gaza, where Kelly waited out Israel's 2009 "Cast Lead" operation in a region of Gaza along its border with Egypt which was sustaining heavy bombardment.

Among numerous fasts and peace walks, Kelly has joined protests at several domestic USAF drone bases, incurring a June 2014 arrest with charges threatening a six-month prison sentence.

[citation needed] Shortly after formation, VCNV began sending delegations, several involving Kelly, to interview Iraqi refugees in countries neighboring Iraq, especially Jordan.

[citation needed] In 2007 VCNV initiated the "Occupation Project", in which activists in 25 states occupied the offices of 39 Senators and congressional Representatives whom they regarded as insufficiently committed to defunding the Iraq war.

[citation needed] In January 2009, Kelly had helped organize "Camp Hope: Countdown to Change," a 19-day winter vigil two blocks from the Chicago home of then-President-Elect Barack Obama, but she spent most of the length of the vigil in Egypt and in the Gaza Strip, witnessing Israel's 22-day Operation Cast Lead assault on the region, living with a Gazan family in a neighborhood skirting the area under heaviest bombardment.

In May and June 2009, Kelly traveled to Pakistan with a small VCNV delegation, including activist Gene Stoltzfus, that met with organizations and families in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Shah Mansour,[21] Tarbella,[22] and Lahore, reporting back with essays.

[28] Kelly stayed a week in solidarity with the arrested Greek captain until bail could be arranged, then attempted to reach Gaza by plane in the "Flytilla", but was denied entry to Israel and returned to Greece.

In late December 2011 Kelly and two other international activists returned to a working-class Kabul neighborhood to live alongside members of the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers, whom she then helped escort on a brief January delegation to Bhopal in India.

Kelly arranged travel to Gaza in hurried response to Israel's November 2012 "Pillar of Defense" bombardment, arriving one day after a ceasefire and spending the following two weeks visiting bombing sites and interviewing survivors.

[34][35] In August 2015 Kelly helped organize and joined a 90-mile walk through Wisconsin linking increasingly militarized, racially targeted police violence inside the US with ongoing US drone assassinations of high-risk civilians, their neighbors and families, in multiple Middle Eastern and North African countries.

[37] In January 2017 Kelly was convicted of trespass for having obstructed transit at an April 2016 Black Lives Matter demonstration protesting the Minnesota police's shooting of Jamar Clark.

Since the end of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Kelly has helped lead an ad-hoc group organizing assistance for young Afghans met during her and her fellow activists' travels.

"One of the most important 'Spiritual Directors' in my life has been the Internal Revenue Service ... finding ways to live without owning property, relying on savings, or growing attached to a job ...