Colleen Callahan
Colleen Callahan Burns is an American agribusiness journalist who served as the director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources from March 2019 to January 2023. A Democrat, she was the party’s nominee for Illinois’s 18th congressional district in 2008 but lost to Aaron Schock.
She grew up on a farm near Milford, Illinois, and finished high school as salutatorian. She earned a degree from the University of Illinois in 1973. Her family has long been active in politics in downstate Illinois, including her cousin Cheri Bustos.
Callahan built a career reporting on farming and agriculture, working for WMBD in Peoria and WCIA, and later starting Colleen Callahan Communications. In 2009 she became the USDA Illinois State Director of Rural Development. In 2017 Governor-elect J.B. Pritzker named her co-chair of the Agriculture Transition Committee.
She and her husband Dick Burns live on a farm near Kickapoo, Illinois, where they raise purebred Angus cattle. They have a grown daughter who is a lawyer in Chicago. She has served on many boards and committees and was the first female president of the National Association of Farm Broadcasters.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 13:12 (CET).