The Team
Kiley Bednar, MA
Thread STL Director
klbn2v@umsystem.edu
As CIAC’s Associate Director of Partnership Performance, Kiley leads and oversees a growing portfolio of strategies to build the strength of our region’s many community partnerships and coalitions, including
Most recently, she served 10 years with the Forum for Youth Investment, providing training and technical assistance to state and local leaders working to get young people ready for life. Through the Forum’s David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality, she supported out-of-school time partnerships throughout the U.S. in building systems to measure and improve the quality of their youth programs. Prior to this, she oversaw the Forum for Youth Investment’s training programs – including the Ready by 21 webinar series and the Ready by 21 Institutes – as well as coordinated the national Children’s Cabinet Network for statewide coordinating bodies.
As a technical assistance provider at the Forum, she led community engagement efforts, data communications, and strategic planning for cities and states focused on better aligning their efforts around
Burnea Lester, MA
Thread STL Evaluation and Learning Manager
bslester@umsystem.edu
As the Evaluation and Learning Manager, Burnea partners in learning, evaluation, and continuous quality improvement. Burnea will build on the supports developed with Thread STL, the peer learning network for partnership leaders in the St. Louis region.
Burnea brings over a decade of experience in catalyzing organizations and people to most effectively do their work — empowering staff and students through key performance indicators, coaching and training. She has developed expertise in project and relationship management, strategic planning, data systems, and higher education administration. She is honored to bring these experiences with her in her role as Evaluation and Learning Manager.
Burnea has served several prominent organizations including Concordia University Chicago, Adtalem Education Group and Enterprise Holdings. She is a Coro Women in Leadership FOCUS St. Louis Alumnus and received an undergraduate degree (B.S. in Broadcast Journalism) from Northwest Missouri State University, a graduate degree (M.A. in Media Communiciation and Media Literacy) from Webster University and a graduate degree (M.A. in Higher Educational Leadership) from the Keller Graduate School of Management, Chicago.
Beyond these significant accomplishments, Burnea is a co-founder of MillennialU, a training ground for emerging young leaders, as well as co-founder of Art of Adaption, a training platform for teaching and training on diversity, equity and inclusion.