John Tyler
Board of Trustees - Board Member
John Tyler is General Counsel, Secretary and Chief Ethics Officer for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation where for more than 18 years he has served on the leadership team and provided and overseen meeting the diverse legal needs of the Foundation and its affiliates. He also serves as an ambassador for the Foundation into the field of philanthropy, including by serving or having served in various capacities for the Philanthropy Roundtable, Alliance for Charitable Reform, Independent Sector, NYU law school’s National Center on Philanthropy and the Law, and Columbia law school’s State Charity Officer initiative, among others. John also regular speaks guest lectures, and publishes on topics related to nonprofit governance, the roles of philanthropy in society, social enterprise and hybrid forms, university technology transfer, and other topics.
Specific to education, John has served on several school boards, including as president of the boards of Genesis School, Archbishop O’Hara High School, and the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph. He also was on the boards of Science Pioneers, Missourians for Students at Risk, and Kauffman Scholars. In addition to being involved with helping start St. Michael’s, he has had roles in starting two schools: Cristo Rey to Kansas City (feasibility study committee) and the Ewing Marion Kauffman School. Also for eight years, John was in the classroom as an adjunct professor at Rockhurst University, and he teaches two master’s level courses he designed for Columbia University.
John and his wife Rita are graduates of Archbishop O’Hara High School as are their three oldest children. One of their sons was in the first graduating class of St. Michael’s in 2018 and have two other children who also graduated from St. Michael. They are parishioners at Our Lady of the Presentation Church.