Margarita Kilili-Lesta is a Fulbright scholar, holding a double BSc degree in Communicative Disorders/Speech-Language Pathology and Psychology from the University of Wisconsin- Madison, and a MA degree in Communicative Disorders/Speech-Language Pathology from San Diego State University in the United States (US). She was a research assistant for the Wisconsin Twin Research Lab under Dr. Goldsmith, examining the development and language samples of twins from infancy up to 36-months-of-age, as well as a research assistant in San Diego under Dr. Vera Gutierrez-Clellen, examining the language development of bilingual children. She is a registered Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) and member of the Cyprus Association of Registered Speech-Language Pathologist and works for the Cyprus Ministry of Education, Sport, and Youth (MOESY) as an SLP in the public schools since 2007.

Since 2014 she was a clinical supervisor, teaching clinical practice to university students in the field of Speech-Language Therapy at the European University Cyprus (EUC) and since 2021 she was appointed as the SLP representative of the District Committee of Special Education and Training in the MOESY. She has over 20 years of clinical working experience in assessment and therapy, in-person, as well as through telepractice, both in the US and Cyprus. Her research interest involves early identification, evaluation, service provision, augmentative communication support and evidence-based practice for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and their families. She is currently a PhD Candidate in Public Health at EUC, performing research for the prevalence, characteristics, and predictive factors for the language development of children with ASD in Cyprus, with approval from the Cyprus National Bioethics Committee. She has published articles in peer reviewed journals, presented her work in conferences both in Cyprus and abroad, and has been an external collaborator to the iCommunicate Research Center at EUC since 2020.