Mary Louise Kelly

Mary Louise Kelly is a guest host for NPR's news and talk programs including Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition Saturday.

In 2004, Kelly launched NPR's intelligence beat. Over six years in this position she regularly covered spy agencies such as the CIA and the National Security Agency, and the policy-makers that oversee them, including the Senate and House intelligence committees. She also tracked threats to national security from terrorist organizations, such as Al Qaeda and others, and rising nuclear powers.

As part of the national security team, she traveled extensively to investigate and report on a range of foreign policy and military issues. Kelly chronicled the Obama administration's tactics and strategy for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Kelly's first assignment at NPR was senior editor of NPR's award-winning afternoon newsmagazine, All Things Considered.

A Georgia native, Kelly's first job as a local political reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution began her journalism career. In 1996 she made the leap to broadcasting, joining the team that launched Public Radio International's The World. The following year Kelly moved to London to work as a producer for CNN and as a senior producer, host, and foreign correspondent for the BBC World Service. Over the years, her assignments have taken her around the world: to the Afghan-Pakistan border, to mosques in Hamburg, to refugee camps during the Kosovo conflict, to the peace talks that ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland and to the Iraqi desert.

Kelly graduated from Harvard University in 1993 with a bachelor's degree in government and French history and literature. Two years later, she completed a master's degree in European Studies at Cambridge University in England.

Currently, Kelly teaches national security and journalism classes at Georgetown University and is working on writing a book. She and her husband, Nick Boyle, have two sons and live in Washington, D.C.