Uniting
Research and Policy

Trina Reynolds-Tyler, MPP'20, is a data research analyst with the Invisible Institute, a journalism production company on the South Side of Chicago that works to enhance the capacity of citizens to hold public institutions accountable. She is also a data science researcher at TM Productions.  She is active as a community organizer in Chicago.

While at Harris Public Policy, Reynolds-Tyler worked as a data science researcher with TM Productions, a multimedia production team that makes political and legal information accessible to Black and Brown communities in Chicago. Throughout her time at Harris, she also continued her data analysis work with the Invisible Institute. Reynolds-Tyler spent the summer of 2019 as a human rights intern with the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, supporting projects such as the modeling of the locations of hidden graves in Mexico, the enumeration of people who died in the Sri Lanka civil war, and an estimation model of deaths to aid in El Salvador war crime trials.

Prior to her time at the University of Chicago, Reynolds-Tyler served a fellow at the Invisible Institute, researching police misconduct and compiling data for high-profile legal cases. In this role, she analyzed large-scale administrative Chicago Police Department data sets to provide statistical reports on police use of force to community organizations. The officer profile created from the data she analyzed was a critical contribution to the organization’s legal team in the class-action lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department, Campbell v. City of Chicago. Previously, Reynolds-Tyler was an AmeriCorps volunteer with the Illinois African American Coalition for Prevention. As a youth development coordinator, she worked on programming in cognitive behavioral therapy, restorative justice, and mentoring, while cofacilitating peace circles to address trauma for young people disproportionally affected by violence. She is the founder of Conversations and Relations, a restorative justice organization that creates cultural competence curriculum designed for educators on the South Side of Chicago, collaborating with community organizations and Indiana State University.

Reynolds-Tyler graduated from Colorado College with a degree in Hispanic studies and a minor in feminist and gender studies, spending a semester abroad in Salamanca, Spain. Upon graduation, she was awarded the Outstanding Student Leader Award, granted to one student in the college each year, for her work mentoring incoming students of color.