Laura Kunard, Ph.D., serves as the Associate Monitor for Data Collection, Analysis, and Management and for Officer Safety and Wellness. Dr. Kunard also serves as Senior Fellow at the non-profit CNA, where she focuses on improving, professionalizing, and transforming police agencies through training, technical assistance, planning, and monitoring. She is an experienced researcher, project director, and police trainer and works on a variety of U.S. Department of Justice initiatives providing technical assistance to police departments, including the COPS Office’s Collaborative Reform Organizational Assessment Initiative and Enhanced Training.

She served as the Associate Monitor for Crisis Intervention on the Albuquerque Independent Monitoring Team for 11 years, gauging implementation of police department reforms and she consulted with the U.S. DOJ on the Puerto Rico consent decree. She has focused on police reform and civil rights throughout her career, often through the lens of training and education. She has trained thousands of officers through annual in-service courses, in higher education settings, and through developing national training curricula addressing community policing, procedural justice, implicit bias, and crisis intervention strategies. She has also developed and delivered training on community policing, impartial policing, cultural competency, and de-escalation.

Dr. Kunard earned her Ph.D. in Criminology and her M.A. in Criminal Justice from the University of Illinois at Chicago; she earned her B.A. in Sociology and Psychology from Northwestern University. She lives in Chicago.