Kayla Pincus

Communications Strategist; Sentencing Expert

Kayla is passionate about improving lives and using empathy to bridge gaps between people and each other, institutions, policy and technology. By re-framing “us versus them” paradigms and narratives, Kayla works to shape social movement.

In college, after working in Ohio education policy, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, criminal justice and American race relations, Kayla learned that her passion is in making big, systemic changes by learning about what elements connect all of these issues. To consider a particularly polarizing “us versus them” framework, she turned to the death penalty. Instead of studying the issue through the traditional lens of criminology at the University of Cambridge, Kayla kept her sights set on learning what mechanisms were at play that could be applied to the network of other issues she plans to address going forward. Kayla chose an entirely autonomous Master’s of Social Psychology program and designed and ran a novel, quantitative, narrative-based experiment in which she successfully lowered support for the death penalty with a sample size of over 1,000 participants.

Kayla’s research at the University of Cambridge was informed by her experience as an investigator for the Federal Public Defender on death penalty cases in Arkansas. For two years, she told the life stories of her clients to help explain why they are the way they are in order to get a reduced sentence. With the unwavering support of her clients, Kayla left Arkansas knowing that the change she would make will transform the structures that underserved them, the victims of their crimes and many others.

Kayla is a dedicated, creative, self-driven and resourceful thinker and doer who finds creative solutions to complex problems.

Keywords: social psychology, behavioral science, design, empathy, communications, pubic policy, user experience, polarization, identity, storytelling, framing.

Skills: Interviewing, Writing, Editing, Research, LexisNexis, CaseMap, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, ArcGIS, SurveyMonkey, WordPress, SPSS, jamovi, Excel, PowerPoint, Accurint, Pacer, Mac/Windows, JSTOR, G Suite, Doodle