She glows : Stephanie Crandall

By Jennie Renner | Photo by Leaha Meinika

Kody Tinnel, 34, is a lifelong resident of Fort Wayne. He graduated f rom South Side High School and earned a bachelor’s and a master’s in public affairs at Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne (IPFW.) He currently has a position with Fort Wayne Community Schools as the Manager of Talent Acquisition and Retention.

When Tinnel is not at his day job, or working in his garden at home, he keeps himself busy in various community roles. His rather lengthy list of volunteer involvement includes being a commissioner for the Fort Wayne Metropolitan Human Relations Commission; a board member and former president of the Packard Area Planning Alliance; and a board member and former president of the Foster Park Neighborhood Association.

And earlier this year, Tinnel co-founded the Tree Canopy Growth Fund - an organization that educates the public about the need for more trees to be planted on private property and raises money to make this possible.

For Tinnel, his foray into public service started during his days at IPFW when he was in student government. When he first got involved in his neighborhood association, it felt familiar to him. “It brought a lot of memories back from my student government days in terms of getting a group of people together with a shared general direction, but maybe a lot of different ways to get there and a lot of different people involved, with different personalities.”

Working in the neighborhood association began to ignite Tinnel’s passion for local community service. “I started to dive deeper into that and realize that I really loved everything about trying to bring people together to solve shared challenges.”

Tinnel believes that everyone has the capacity to make a difference especially at the local level. That is how he has prioritized his time with so many potential problems to solve and places where he could serve.

“I’ve done a lot of things in the community with a goal of just trying to make things better, starting with the little chunk of land that I’m on and working outward,” said Tinnel.

His goal is to expand his circle of influence, but for now, he is focused on doing the most good where he currently is, including in his role at Fort Wayne Community Schools. “It is critically important for public schools to be able to serve every single student and take care of the humans that are in our buildings at the most basic level and treat them as the humans that they are, that deserve access to a really great education.”

He said it is the same for his role in the neighborhood association and all the activities with which he’s involved. “How do we make sure that everyone in our community has at least a basic shot at having a good life and being treated with dignity and respect because they’re human and they exist and they’re part of our community?”

In a perfect world, Tinnel would have a job as a public servant, using his time and talent for the community as a paid volunteer. “I dream of a world where there’s some sort of formal mechanism for this,” he said. “Where there’s an involved community member job description.”

Until that time, he will just keep on doing the best he can to make his corner of the world a better place. And he invites others to join him.