League members, guests and members of the public are invited to Cantigny Park's McCormick House for a presentation by Kerry Lester, a Chicago-based author and award-winning journalist who will discuss the major issues facing our state, providing guidance on how to evaluate candidate positions before casting your ballot on March 20. A cash bar will be available. 

A cash bar will be available. Registration is required; parking and program are free.

Our speaker, Kerry Lester, is an award winning journalist and author. A former Associated Press bureau chief at the state Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, she's also worked as a political editor and columnist for the Daily Herald, and as a staff writer for the Chicago Catholic.

Inspired to pursue a journalism career after graduating from Villanova University, Kerry earned a graduate's degree at the Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she reported on the Troubles as an intern at one of the city's two dailies, the Irish News.

Named repeatedly as one of the Best State Capitol Reporters in America by the Washington Post, and as one of Chicago's most powerful women in journalism by Robert Feder in 2017, Kerry's proudest of a four-year series on a 2008 knife attack by a suburban Chicago student on a teacher. That series examining school safety standards prompted a 2012 change in Illinois law.