“For me, the most rewarding thing is to take something really complicated, study it until I understand it, and then break it down simply so other people can understand it too. I never do this alone—I have to work with experts. It is an enormous privilege to work with these experts and to learn what makes their areas tricky, but also to distill their wisdom down into everyday actionable things frontline healthcare providers and patients can do.”
Kelly is a practicing pharmacist that has worked in a variety of settings including community pharmacy, primary care, and public health. Additionally, she works as an associate professor at the University of Waterloo’s School of Pharmacy and as a pharmacy practice researcher where she has authored over 70 papers. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, she often works alongside researchers in computer science, human factors, systems design, medicine, and more. Kelly’s papers aim to understand pharmacists’ experiences with expanding scopes of practice, and technology usage. She contributed to the development of Pharmacy5in5, a popular online learning platform that helps pharmacists feel more comfortable using their full scope of practice. Over the pandemic, Kelly acted as the pharmacy lead with the Region of Waterloo Vaccine Task Force, which included working in and helping to plan mass vaccine clinics and supporting pharmacists in building relationships with public health. Kelly completed her pharmacy degree at the University of Alberta, a hospital residency at the London Health Sciences Centre, a PharmD, a Master of Science degree, and a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of British Columbia.