Kelly Balistreri

Kelly brings a rare combination of clinical training and hands-on horsemanship to her work at Partners for Progress. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Special Education and Therapeutic Horsemanship from St. Andrews University in North Carolina, where she also obtained her North Carolina Special Education teaching license and spent two years teaching in the classroom. During her four years at St. Andrews, Kelly taught therapeutic riding lessons for three years and later spent an additional year at a therapeutic riding center elsewhere in North Carolina. She also competed on St. Andrews' intercollegiate Hunt Seat and Dressage teams. Upon returning to Illinois, Kelly pursued a career in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy, earning her Registered Behavior Technician (RBT) certification. She also holds her CHA (Certified Horsemanship Association) certification.

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Kelly has been riding and working around horses her entire life, getting her start thanks to her mother, a riding instructor. That early foundation grew into a lifelong passion — one that led her to change her college plans in the final two months of high school so she could pursue a degree in therapeutic horsemanship at St. Andrews instead.

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Kelly's connection to this work is deeply personal. With a younger sister who has Down syndrome, she became interested early on in how horses could be used to create meaningful therapeutic benefit. For Kelly, therapeutic riding and hippotherapy bring together every piece of her life's path — her education, her clinical training, and her lifelong love of horses — and she describes Partners for Progress as the place where all of those pieces finally fit together.