Kelly is a senior at UCLA majoring in Latin American Studies.  While he began his travels as a teenager, his interest in the region was piqued in 2002 when he toured South America in the wake of protests, elections, and economic crises.  Wanting to discover more, he traveled to Cuba and has since covered extensive areas of Mexico.  He has studied the effects of NAFTA at the University of Guanajuato, Mexico and conducted a case study of the public market and its role in an increasingly globalized environment.

 His main area of interest is the Andean region.  Kelly has been studying Quechua at UCLA in hopes of working in that part of the Americas.  In particular, he is interested in how Latin American peoples have dealt with the forces of globalization and continue to shape their societies in today’s world. 

Kelly is from Ventura, California.