Kelly Jones
British Steel Chief Restructuring Officer
Kelly joined British Steel in an interim turnaround capacity in March 2026 as Chief Restructuring Officer. Prior to that she was the CEO of Octric Semiconductors, having joined the business following the MoD’s acquisition in Sept 2024. She led the carve out of this secure facility from its previous US-owned parent company, stabilised the operations and management team, and accelerated a critical development of future technology platforms.
Kelly was born in the US, where she received her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, and an MBA from Indiana University. Kelly started her 17-year career at Rolls-Royce plc in 1997 when she joined its Defence site in Indianapolis, Indiana. In 2002, Kelly relocated to Derby, England, as a controls engineer on Civil Aerospace gas turbine engine development programmes and continued to work in various corporate roles, including aircraft finance, international tax, risk management; to reach an executive position in corporate strategy.
Her assignments included a 3-year post in China to establish Rolls-Royce plc’s first in-country trading entity, enabling £2bn of programme revenues. Kelly became a naturalised British citizen in 2006. In 2014, she left Rolls-Royce to take up her first CEO role at an industrial manufacturing business in the northeast of England, which was the start of her career in corporate rescue and turnaround. For the last 12 years, she has delivered business turnaround outcomes as a CEO or CRO; primarily in industrial manufacturing business, as well as automotive, construction and defence sectors. Kelly was accredited as a full member of the Institute for Turnaround in 2017, after a rigorous accreditation procedure and peer review process.
Kelly is a non-executive director at Sheffield Forgemasters International Ltd (wholly owned by the UK Ministry of Defence), a board director of the Institute for Turnaround, and is a member of the Management Excellence Board for EMK Capital (a non-board advisory role for the London based private equity firm).
