Jeffrey S. Kelly
Chairman and Retired Owner/CEO, Hamill Manufacturing Company
The Cardinal Newman Society gratefully presents the Saint John Henry Newman Award to Jeffrey Kelly, the retired owner/CEO and current Chairman of Hamill Manufacturing Company in Penn Township, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. With Mr. Kelly’s strong Catholic faith and decades of experience leading a premier manufacturing company and collaborating with other industry leaders, he has been an invaluable partner to The Cardinal Newman Society in establishing the Newman Guide Network to bring together faithful school, homeschool, college, and graduate program leaders to advance the reform of Catholic education. On behalf of Catholic families who greatly benefit from Newman Gude Recommended education, we recognize Jeffrey Kelly for his transformational impact, and we uphold Mr. Kelly as a model of lay Catholic leadership and a witness to the value of faithful Catholic formation.
Jeffrey Kelly became Executive Vice President of Hamill Manufacturing Company in 1981 and President in 1996, following in the footsteps of his father, William, who founded Hamill in 1952. The precision machining and fabricating company serves the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program and other defense-related companies, as well as the power generation and aerospace industries. Mr. Kelly promoted employee esteem for technology throughout the company and ensured clean, air-conditioned facilities equipped with state-of-the-art CNC machining tools, EDM machines, Radiography Lab, CMM facility, and modern weld equipment.
Under Mr. Kelly, Hamill was a founding member of the National Tooling and Machining Association’s Pittsburgh Chapter. He has been a member of the NTMA since 1977 and served as the 2007 NTMA National Chairman.
Mr. Kelly started an Employee Stock Ownership plan for the company in 2009, and when he retired as President at the end of 2021, he sold his ownership and made Hamill a 100 percent employee-owned company. Today he remains Chairman of the board of directors.
Outside the company, Mr. Kelly has generously served his community in workforce development and preparing students for manufacturing careers. He was Chairman of the Westmoreland County School-to-Work Partnership and Chairman of the Westmoreland Fayette Workforce Investment Board. He brought BotsIQ to Southwestern Pennsylvania in 2005, helping high school students team up with local manufacturers to design, build, and operate 15-pound combat robots. Since its inception, more than 20,000 students from 127 different schools have participated.
Before joining Hamill in 1976, Mr. Kelly served five years in the United States Marine Corps as an aviator. He is a graduate of Serra Catholic High School in White Oak, Pa., and he continues to support that school and other faithful Catholic schools. He also graduated from Duquesne University with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Physics and earned a Master of Business Administration from the University of Pittsburgh. He and his wife, Sharon, have three children and two grandchildren.
