Kierra Burns

Events Coordinator

 

Highlights:

• Worked at MOI since 2025
• Master’s (Idaho State) and bachelor’s degree (Southern Virginia) in English
• taught college-level English at two universities, plus work experience at multiple local nonprofits

 

Profile:

Q: Explain what you do at the museum in 20 words or less.

Kierra: I create and facilitate events and programs here at the museum!

Q: What’s a museum-related accomplishment that you’re particularly proud of?

Kierra: Stay tuned…I’m just getting started.

Q: What do you do for fun?

Kierra: Reading, sewing, photography, traveling, volunteering, attempting to teach myself to play the piano.

Q: What would you do for a career if you weren’t doing this (and if money were no object)?

Kierra: Can we say money and ability are no object…?
In that case, I’d love to be a cultural and nature photographer/photojournalist for National Geographic, traveling the world, meeting amazing people, and celebrating all the wonders that this rotating rock we’re on offers us.

Or, maybe I’d be a princess (or villain?) on a Disneyland parade float.

Q: What’s the weirdest / most interesting past job you’ve had?

Kierra:My first job as a teen was as a balloon twister. I can still make you a balloon flower/sword/dog/hat/rabbit, if you ask nicely. On the other end of the “weird” spectrum, I’m also a certified lactation counselor, so I have a huge amount of knowledge about breast anatomy and newborn feeding.

Q: Name a setback in your life that has ended up being a good thing.

Kierra: When the housing market collapsed in 2008, my husband and I were both laid off from our jobs teaching high school in Arizona in the same week. It’s what brought us to Idaho, and that’s been the most wonderful thing. We love Eastern Idaho.

Q: What’s something – large or small, useful or not – that you’re really good at?

Kierra: I’m pretty spectacular at spontaneously changing the lyrics of Broadway showtunes into something pertinent to whatever is happening at a given moment, especially if it allows me to embarrass my kids in public. Alas, my talents are wasted on their ingratitude.

In addition to the previous fact about my being a lactation counselor, I wrote my master’s thesis on breastfeeding belief and practice in medieval England, so I also have a lot of useless knowledge about medieval lactation history: medicine, magic, art, religion, etc. 

Q: What were you like in high school?

Kierra: Oh, I was super weird, but pretty oblivious to it because I had good friends who kept the bullies at bay. I wore a “spirit sock puppet” and colored my hair green for all the football games and went way overboard for spirit days. I was in just about every club – theater, show choir, service club, speech and debate, student council, DECA, mock trial, yearbook, etc.

Q: What’s your favorite book, movie, and TV show?

Kierra:

• Book:
  Fiction: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (not the HG Wells one about an actually invisible man. This one is about a young Black man coming of age in mid-century Harlem, and it fundamentally changed how I see the world.) Non-fiction: The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America by Timothy Egan (SO GOOD, especially if you love Idaho history or Teddy Roosevelt!)
• Movie: O, Brother, Where Art Thou? (I’ve watched it a million times, and it never gets old.)
• TV Show: I have to admit, I’m not really a TV watcher. Maybe it’s because there’s never been another show as great as The West Wing.

Q: Tell us something about you that might surprise us.

Kierra: I was a collegiate cheerleader. So, add “standing on people’s hands” to my list of useless skills, though I highly doubt I could still pull that one off.