Kelly Marvel, senior human resources manager for Kamps Inc., was named a recipient of the 2025 Women in Supply Chain award, presented by Food Logistics and Supply & Demand Chain Executive, in the Workforce Innovator category.
Marvel is a results-driven HR leader with a proven track record of empowering individuals and driving organizational success. Throughout her career, Marvel has been at the forefront of initiatives that elevate HR practices and foster professional growth, offering practical administrative support, fostering common ground, and cultivating collaborative relationships with operations teams.
Marvel’s professional journey began with an HR internship that led to a full-time role as an HR assistant at a large physical therapy company. Just over a year later, she was promoted to HR coordinator, a role in which she spent several years refining her technical and organizational skills. After that, she advanced to HR generalist, taking on responsibility for all leave administration and becoming the primary contact for employee relations and policy interpretation for 1,100 employees across 25 states. A few years later, she advanced to HR manager and eventually to HR director, where she led the HR, payroll, and talent acquisition departments for over 1.5 years.
One of the standout moments in her career came during the COVID-19 pandemic, where she helped lead the organization through a complex and rapidly changing landscape, addressing a wide range of challenges, including mandatory vaccination and testing policies, managing quarantine restrictions, and processing the influx of unemployment claims. She played a key role in navigating state-specific curfews and crafting exemption letters for staff traveling during these restrictions. She also persuaded employees to return to work despite the temptation of higher supplemental weekly pay provided by many state unemployment programs.
After earning her SHRM-SCP certification in September 2021, Marvel joined Kamps, Inc. as senior human resources manager, where she continues to make a concerted effort to position HR not as a barrier, but as a strategic partner in driving operational success.
For instance, Marvel helped facilitate the adoption of the Workday HRIS system at Kamps, where she developed comprehensive training materials and conducted sessions to ensure employee proficiency. This initiative streamlined operations and equipped employees with the tools needed to succeed. She also helped oversee a significant number of new employee onboarding. As a result, she introduced monthly regional office staff meetings, bridging gaps between geographically dispersed teams and fostering a culture of community and collaboration.
Beyond the day-to-day HR functions, Marvel has also been a catalyst for process improvements, where she’s led the conversion of various outdated legacy forms into more efficient and accurate documents, including some fillable PDFs, greatly improving both the employee and manager experience.
