Kerri A. Kilbourne believes her success in business is the result of her attentive listening skills. She takes the time to understand others’ perspectives and has leveraged this ability in her accomplished career as a manager and leader. Since 2022, she has thrived as the owner of Just Sweet Enough Baked Goods in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she bakes and sells delicious treats with premium ingredients. From a humble start baking Christmas cookies with her mother and sharing her creations throughout her condominium community, Ms. Kilbourne has since transformed her baking passion into a bustling small business. She has maintained strong, long-lasting relationships throughout her career and uses her networking skills to build business and generate word-of-mouth referrals. Now, she has even been featured in Bon Appetit Magazine. In the coming years, her expansion plans include pursuing commercial kitchen space to rent and hiring staff, as she envisions her baked goods being sold in retail locations and her brand growing into a household name.
Ms. Kilbourne enjoyed a long and fruitful career before launching her baking business. From 2022 to 2023, she was an affiliate for customer-centric functions with River Rock Advisors, and from 2020 to 2022, she worked as the director of customer care for the ICP Building Solutions Group. Ms. Kilbourne began her career in 1996, working for Alcoa Fujikura Limited until 1998. She subsequently held multiple positions with Corning Incorporated between 1999 and 2003, serving as an applications engineer, senior diesel account engineer, and senior account engineer. Securing experience as a custom product engineer and market segment manager at Avery Dennison, she later worked as a program manager at the Behr Process Corporation between 2007 and 2010. For the next three years, she was an eBusiness marketing manager at the Masco Corporation. Ms. Kilbourne then became a market manager of converter solutions with Bostik in 2013, where she held multiple positions until ending her tenure as the leader of customer experience from 2018 to 2022.
As the owner of Just Sweet Enough Baked Goods, Ms. Kilbourne is proud to maintain a professional and presentable brand in all her customer-facing work. She handles all aspects of the business including baking at special events. Alongside her primary roles, she has maintained membership with the Pressure Sensitive Tape Council since 2016 and with the Tag and Label Manufacturers Institute since 2013. Academically, in 1999, Ms. Kilbourne graduated from Clemson University with a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering. She has also been a member of the Delta Gamma Fraternity, a women’s fraternity located in the United States and Canada.
Active in her community, Ms. Kilbourne has been a board member of City Green Condominiums since 2021. As an enthusiastic patron of the arts, she was a board member of the Next Act Theatre from 2014 to 2018 and a community advisory panel member for the Repertory Theater from 2016 to 2017. Ms. Kilbourne served as a council co-chair with UPAF Next Generation from 2014 to 2019 and has supported small business fairs to foster entrepreneurship.
Ms. Kilbourne is grateful to have found professional happiness after working for 20 years in the corporate world. Always capable of working with a wide variety of people, she has enjoyed steady improvement in her time management and professional networking skills. She has been recognized for her career achievements with the Americas Industrial Adhesives 2016 Outstanding Achiever Award and a Leadership Award from Next Generation United Performing Arts Fund in 2015. Additionally, she was featured in the Marquis Who’s Who Millenium Magazine. In her personal time, she enjoys walking her two Golden Retrievers, Rory and McPaddy. She also plays golf, participates in other outdoor activities, and has dinner with friends.
