Leona Tyler was born in Chetek, Wisconsin on May 10, 1906. She received a BA in English from the University of Minnesota at age nineteen, and, after years of teaching English and other subjects in junior high school in Minnesota and Michigan, she completed her PhD in counseling psychology at the University of Minnesota in 1940. Tyler began teaching at the university level as an instructor at University of Oregon in 1940. In 1965, she became Dean of the Graduate School. After her mandated retirement at age 65 in 1971, she remained active in the UO research environment until her death in 1993.

Tyler's research focused on the construct of organized choices. Her concerns about vocational interests led to a longitudinal study of the broader question of the directions of development that interests and personality take. A major research finding was that, as people thought about careers, dislikes and avoidances were more important than likes. This research led to the study of how choices organized peoples' lives. She developed the Choice Pattern Technique, that required people to indicate their construals of occupations and free-time activities. In 1962, she received the Fulbright scholarship to work at the University of Amsterdam. This allowed her to test her ideas and methods cross-culturally. Her research was extended to India and Australia and expanded to take in values, daily activities, and future time-perspectives in adolescents.

[Biographical information drawn from an obituary written by Tyler's colleagues in the UO Department of Psychology Norman Sundberg and Richard Littman.]