With training in special education, classroom teaching experience, and having worked in the field of pediatric brain injury for over thirty years, Dr. Janet Tyler has the expertise and experience to help others understand the complex needs of students with brain injuries.

For twenty-three years Dr. Tyler served as director of an innovative statewide program in Kansas that provided training, consultation, and technical assistance to educators serving students with brain injuries and their families. There she developed the first of its kind program for training school personnel to serve students with traumatic brain injury that went on to serve as a national training model. During those years she trained over a thousand educators, related service personnel, and family members; coordinated hospital-to-school re-entry for hundreds of students with brain injury; and guided school personnel in developing educational programs for those students. Additionally, through an adjunct faculty appointment from the University of Kansas Department of Special Education, she developed a traumatic brain injury curriculum and taught a graduate level course on traumatic brain injury for fourteen semesters. Most recently, Dr. Tyler has been serving as the Senior Brain Injury Consultant at the Colorado Department of Education where she has been instrumental in bringing the BrainSTEPS consulting team model to the state and serves as a coordinator for the program. 

Dr. Tyler has published extensively on educational issues related to brain injury.  Her publications include articles in peer-reviewed journals, books, book chapters, manuals, and tip cards on children and adolescents with brain injury all of which she uses to train educators, families, medical personnel, mental health professionals, school/rehabilitation therapists, and students.

She has served as an expert external reviewer for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Report to Congress on the Management of Traumatic Brain Injury in Children, has co-authored a CDC document on the management of concussions in school, and served on the CDC Special Emphasis Panel on Concussions, National Institute of Health Peer Review Committee. 

A popular speaker for workshops and conferences on the educational impact of brain injury on children and youth, Dr. Tyler frequently presents at state, national and international conference. Whether it’s the effects of concussion, or the complex behavioral and cognitive impact of brain trauma, she provides the knowledge and the tools that make a difference in the classroom. 

Dr. Tyler has served as a board member for the American Academy for the Certification of Brain Injury Specialists (1998-2004), the Traumatic Brain Injury Systems Development Project of Kansas (2001-2011), and the Brain Injury Association of Kansas and Greater Kansas City (1997-2002). She rejoined the board of the Brain Injury Association of Kansas and Greater Kansas City in 2013 and served as President from January 2015 to January 2016. In 2018 she was presented the Brain Injury Association of Kansas and Greater Kansas City's Leadership Award "for her tremendous dedication and outstanding leadership in brain injury education and awareness." 

Certified by The Academy of Certified Brain Injury Specialists (ACBIS), Dr. Tyler is a Certified Brain Injury Specialist Trainer (CBIST).

Dr. Tyler has experience teaching in a Special Education Diagnostic Classroom setting and a Learning Disabilities Resource Room.  She is licensed to teach special education in both Kansas and Missouri.

Dr. Tyler received her Ph.D. and Master’s degree in Special Education from the University of Kansas.  Her Bachelor’s degree in Education is from the University of Michigan.