Kaila is an Emmy Award-winning producer, a sports communication graduate of Clemson University, and is currently the Supervising Producer at FC Cincinnati. She has a passion for telling stories that go beyond just the field and is dedicated to sharing both her knowledge of sports and the inspiring stories she comes across, along the way.
At Clemson, Kaila held various positions including an internship at WSPA-TV and her three-year role as a sports reporter for The Clemson Insider. She has become proficient in writing, editing, shooting, reporting, and hosting on-camera. While still in college, she had the opportunity to cover events such as the ESPN College Football Awards Show, the 2016 ACC Basketball Tournament, the 2016 ACC Media Kickoff, the Carolina Panthers’ 2016 Training Camp, and the 2017 College Football Playoff National Championship.
For Clemson University’s website, she produced, shot, and edited her own news packages weekly. She also served as the Clemson correspondent for Sports Illustrated’s Campus Rush and ESPNU’s Campus Connection program where she is most proud of producing her own video feature on the strong bond between two cancer-surviving student athletes.
She gained experience with the inner workings of a collegiate summer baseball team when she became the Communications Director for a team in the Cal Ripken Collegiate Baseball League in 2015. She was responsible for creating content for the team’s website and social media platforms through conducting player and coach interviews and writing game and feature stories.
Kaila represented the Department of Communications as both a Communication Ambassador and the Sports Communication representative for the Dean’s Undergraduate Student Advisory Council. She enjoyed sharing both her passion for the University and the Sports Communication Department as a liaison between the students and potential students and between her peers and the administration. Her involvement helped her be recognized by her college as the recipient of the Dean’s Award for Professional Engagement in 2017.
Following graduation, Kaila was selected as one of 12 students to participate in an intensive journalism program called “The Sports Journalism Institute” and continued learning as an intern for ESPN The Magazine where she worked on content ranging from The Body Issue to the CFB and NFL preview Issues.
After landing a full-time role in studio production cutting highlights for SportsCenter, she spent three seasons covering collegiate-level sports on the event production side. She worked on events such as the 2018 Volleyball National Championship, the 2019 College World Series, the 2019 College Football Awards Show, and the 2019 and 2020 College Football Playoffs. Her favorite experience, however, was working on the launch of the ACC Network as the inaugural Primetime Football crew’s content associate. She spent the 2019 football season editing game elements and teases, producing, shooting, and directing weekly player features, and field-producing sales shoots and sideline hits.
Kaila spent the next 3 years on the Monday Night Football and ESPN NFL Draft crews, where she was promoted to Associate Producer. In 2023, Kaila won her first Emmy Award for Outstanding Live Series as a part of the MNF production team. In the offseason, she produced features for the ESPYS, Sports Humanitarian Awards, and Special Olympics where she got to showcase her passion for impactful storytelling.
While working in production, Kaila maintained her writing and reporting skills by pitching and publishing multiple feature articles on top of her day-to-day responsibilities including a deep-dive into the launch of an MLS club in Charlotte.
Now, she has combined her love for soccer and storytelling in her current role as FC Cincinnati’s Supervising Producer. As Kaila continues to grow in her career, she aims to passionately pursue the type of features that made her love the industry she is a part of. She strives to share those stories through the vast outlets that fans consume media with the hope that someone will be inspired the way she was by the power of creative storytelling.
THE CLEMSON INSIDER – On The Beat: Catching up with Kaila Burns-Heffner
kailaburnsheffner.com 