As Virginia’s Secretary of Health and Human Resources, Janet Kelly (’98) works to improve lives of families and children
About 15 years ago, Janet Kelly stopped outside a Chick-fil-A in Richmond, Va., and struck up a conversation with a young woman facing a crisis pregnancy. That talk turned out to be a pivotal moment in her personal and professional life, directing her next steps in an already successful career in state government and ultimately leading her into the role of a mother to a child in desperate need of a stable family to love him.
From being the first person in her family to attend college, to managing a statewide campaign, to serving as Secretary of the Commonwealth (2010-14) and now as Secretary of Health and Human Resources under Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Kelly sees her career as a calling. She follows God’s plan and direction even when the unexpected happens.
Journey to Liberty
Kelly grew up in Alamance County, N.C. As she ended her junior year of high school with plans of enrolling at the Naval Academy, she injured her knee playing volleyball and was devastated knowing she wouldn’t be able to take on the physical demands of the training there.
Despite a few weeks of confusion and wondering why God would take this dream away from her, she said God worked through her disappointment. Her aunt and uncle in Lynchburg, Va., told her that their pastor at Thomas Road Baptist Church, Liberty founder Jerry Falwell Sr., had announced that any graduates of Lynchburg Christian Academy (now Liberty Christian Academy) would receive a full academic scholarship to Liberty University.
“My dear aunt and uncle took in a very strong-willed, 17-year-old girl and let me live with them my senior year which allowed me to attend LCA and then attend Liberty all four years for free,” Kelly said.
Kelly pursued a bachelor’s degree in government with a minor in philosophy. She said she got “bitten by the political bug” early on in life, as her family would frequently talk about news around the dinner table and participated in politics in their small town. Liberty matched her interests well, and she met people who motivated her to share her passion for service through government.
“I was formed under some really solid philosophy classes for my minor and lessons in practical, political execution for my major,” she said. “Liberty was a very good place to stoke that interest.”
She recalls several “aha moments” during Convocation, when Falwell’s words were an inspiration.
“Dr. Falwell used to say, ‘Read the newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other hand every morning,’” Kelly said. “He really impressed upon me the importance of being active in the public square and not shying away or being intimidated to speak out for what you believe. It was very formative for me to have that courage imposed on me at the time.”
Kelly said her faith became her own at Liberty.
“My philosophy professors helped me discern and articulate why I believe what I believe. I didn’t have an answer to every question, and doubt is a normal part of faith, but the ability to walk in confidence believing that God exists, He is good, He loves me, and He is able to turn pain into purpose was a profound gift. It still is.”
Stumping & Serving
Kelly said she views her career in two halves — political campaigns first, then public service.
After graduation, Kelly headed to the state capital to help with several campaigns. She became the youngest female to successfully manage a statewide campaign when Bob McDonnell won his race for attorney general in 2005. She later served as chief operations officer for McDonnell’s successful gubernatorial campaign in 2009 and was asked to join his cabinet as Secretary of the Commonwealth.
Although Kelly said she always felt that she was fulfilling God’s calling in her life by helping people get elected on the right values, ideals, and truths, and by serving in the governor’s cabinet, she discovered in 2012 that God had even more planned for her and her family.
Remember the chance meeting with the woman outside Chick-fil-A? That was about two years earlier. She had become friends with the woman and kept in touch with her throughout the pregnancy and after the baby was born. Then she received a call for help.
“Her son was 18 months old, and my husband, Ryan, and I had been married for about nine days when we got a call (from a guardian ad litem) telling us that this little boy was going to go into foster care if we didn’t take custody.”
Kelly experienced many emotions as she considered being his foster parent. She was newly married and had taken on a demanding job in the governor’s cabinet. She knew it would be yet another big change for their family, and she wasn’t sure it was the right time or if her family was the right family to do it. But after speaking with her husband, they agreed to take the boy.
She remembered her daughter, age 9 at the time, had prayed that God would bring someone into their lives to show His love to.
“On top of my daughter’s prayer, I had recently come to a place of deep surrender,” Kelly said. “In a moment of gratitude for so many blessings, mostly for my amazing husband, I told God I would do anything He wanted me to do in return.
“I certainly didn’t intend for that prayer to be so drastically life-changing, but that’s really when this calling to serve the most vulnerable happened. I likely would not be Secretary of Health and Human Resources if that personal service had not happened first.”
And as often occurs when we pray, God answered in surprise abundance. Within days of saying yes, they found out they were expecting a “honeymoon baby.”
“Ryan became a husband, a stepdad, a foster dad, and a (biological) dad within 21 days,” Kelly laughed. “I joke that we’re still tired from that.”
When she thinks about how God brought the little boy into their lives, Kelly points to Scripture.
“It has always struck me that the parable of the talents immediately precedes the ‘one of the least of these’ parable in Matthew 25,” she added. “God gives you all these beautiful talents and gifts, so what are you going to do with them and how are you going to use what He has given you? The answer seems pretty obvious if you keep reading: ‘Whatever you do to one of the least of these, you do unto Him.’ That correlation is so convicting to me.”
Stepping Up
The instantaneous welcoming of that little boy, named Ashton, into their home would not only lead to his adoption into their family but put Kelly on a path to advocating for children in foster care and youth in mental health crises across the commonwealth and the country. As Secretary of the Commonwealth, she, along with Ryan, launched Virginia Adopts: Campaign for 1,000, which matched 1,041 children with adoptive families and recruited additional support into the Virginia foster care system.
As she learned more about child welfare through her personal and professional roles, she was led to co-found America’s Kids Belong in 2015 and Virginia’s Kids Belong in 2017, both nonprofits that focus on improving the outcome for children in foster care.
“I certainly would not be in a position to help others without my son, without his mom, without that story, and without that experience,” Kelly said. “The level of blessing is typically directly related to the level of surrender. That’s not to say the surrender or what comes after it is easy — usually it’s the opposite. But it’s been worth it.”
When her efforts began, Virginia was 50th in the nation in permanency (when children age out of foster care without a family). Today, Virginia is 47th, making steady progress in the fight for belonging for every child.
Also, as of July 1, 2024, Virginia has a formal kinship care program that requires frontline workers in the child welfare system to look for family members to place kids with, and it comes with financial resources to support those families, whether they are kin or “fictive kin” like Kelly herself, who had a previous relationship with the child’s family despite not being blood-related.
“We are one of tens of thousands of families who are kinship families,” she said. “If the official policy of the commonwealth is going to be that we need to keep kids out of foster care because we don’t think that’s what’s best for them, then we have to support those families who step up and say, ‘yes.’ AKB and VKB created beautiful partnerships between government, faith communities, and businesses to change the trajectory of kids in foster care.”
As Governor Youngkin’s Senior Advisor for Children and Families, Kelly led the Safe and Sound Task Force, helping to relocate hundreds of children sleeping in local social services offices and hotels to loving homes. To build on the task force, Youngkin launched Safe Kids, Strong Families in May, an initiative to unite and advance child welfare reforms across the state.
“I asked Janet Kelly to take on this most important task of finding a place for these children to call home,” Youngkin said following an event on May 15 where he announced the initiative and signed new child welfare reforms into law, as reported by the Virginia Mercury. “I remember the first time she came into my office and said, ‘Governor, tonight there are no children sleeping in offices.’ That was a moment. Today, we still have a few. But that is the absolute exception now — not the rule.”
In her work with Virginia First Lady Suzanne Youngkin, Kelly is also prioritizing the youth mental health crisis in Virginia by implementing support systems and preventative measures. In March, she visited Liberty with the First Lady and Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera for the event A Sisterhood Gathering Focused on Well-Being, which celebrated the progress that has been made and explained the hard work that is still left to do. They also took the time to meet personally with students in roundtable discussions.
Janet Kelly (right) speaks on a panel with Virginia First Lady Suzanne Youngkin (left) and Virginia Secretary of Education Aimee Guidera (middle) at the event A Sisterhood Gathering Focused on Well-Being. (Photo by Matt Reynolds)
During the event, Kelly discussed the root causes of many mental health problems and the initiatives to battle them, like the Governor’s Reclaiming Childhood Task Force, of which she serves as co-chair. With 57% of teen girls reporting being chronically hopeless or sad, the task force was launched in 2024 to address the youth mental health crisis specifically by providing resources, tools, and empowerment for families.
“We want to affirm what parents already know, that an average of 33 hours a week on social media outside of school is too much, and it is hurtful to our kids,” Kelly said in an interview for this article. “It’s a mental health crisis, it’s a physical health crisis, and it’s a spiritual crisis. We have to do better by our kids, and it starts with parents being empowered with the right information to make better decisions.”
At the direction of the Governor, she has also worked to bring immediate care to individuals of all ages struggling with mental illnesses through multiple other initiatives, including the First Lady’s It Only Takes One fentanyl awareness initiative and Governor Youngkin’s transformational behavioral health plan, Right Help, Right Now, which ensures Virginians get immediate behavioral health support before, during, and after a crisis.
“If you had a serious mental illness three years ago, 988 (Virginia’s suicide and crisis lifeline) did not exist. Now it does, and if the crisis cannot be de-escalated — and the vast majority of calls are — we now have over 100 mobile crisis teams in the commonwealth, and the response time is less than an hour on average,” she added. “We also have crisis beds and chairs for those with extra mental health or substance use needs.”
As Kelly continues her work to improve the health and well-being of families across the commonwealth, she said Liberty’s mission of Training Champions for Christ has come to mean a lot to her over the years.
“To me, it means to love God, love people, love yourself and help others do the same. If you do those things, then you are more likely to be able to say ‘yes’ when you get a call to serve. Governor Youngkin highlighted something similar at Liberty’s Commencement address this year: the notion of ‘Here I am. Send me.’ When you say ‘yes’ from a place of health, that is when the beauty and joy and wonder of life really take shape.”
