AP&G Difference Makers: Andrea Tyler Evans

In this new segment we highlight people who have left an unwavering positive impact on our community. Today we highlight Andrea Tyler Evans, a storyteller who made the Valley feel seen.

A Life Built Around Other People’s Stories

Andrea Tyler Evans spent her career doing something the Valley doesn’t always get enough of: paying close attention to the people doing the work and making sure someone wrote it down. As Publisher and CEO of Frontdoors Media and The Red Book, she built an outlet around telling the stories of philanthropists, nonprofit leaders, and the causes they championed across the Phoenix area. In 2018, the Phoenix Business Journal named her one of its Outstanding Women in Business, recognition that tracked with a reputation she’d been building for years.

Roots That Ran Deep

Evans was an Arizona State University alumna and a Valley Leadership Institute graduate, and her start in this world was as a volunteer and event manager for The Phoenix Symphony, where she was already known for bringing genuine care and creativity to the work long before Frontdoors existed. That same instinct carried through everything she touched afterward. She was deeply involved with Valley Youth Theatre, chairing fundraising events that helped sustain its work with young performers, and in December 2024 the Be Kind People Project named her its Community Luminary Award honoree, with the organization’s founder crediting her years of volunteer work and sustained support for what she called so many nonprofits and worthy causes in the Valley. She also co-founded The Sauce Foundation with her husband, Tom, and friend Fernanda Santos Saucier, in honor of their late colleague Mike Saucier, an organization that now supports cancer research at TGen and journalism scholarships at ASU.

A Battle She Chose to Make Public

Evans lived with esthesioneuroblastoma, a rare cancer, for 13 years, and rather than keep that fight private, she stayed publicly engaged as a survivor and advocate with STARS Arizona’s cancer-survivor community throughout. Colleagues and friends consistently point to the same gift when they describe her: an ability to make people feel genuinely seen and appreciated, and to turn that connection into real momentum for the causes she cared about.

The Legacy She Left in Place

Even while managing her illness, Evans arranged a leadership transition to make sure Frontdoors Media would continue its mission without interruption, a final act of stewardship for a community she’d spent her career championing. She passed away on August 17, 2025, survived by her husband, Tom, and their children. Her family asked that, in lieu of flowers, gifts be directed to The Sauce Foundation or Valley Youth Theatre, and the Valley community has since gathered more than once to celebrate a life spent making sure other people’s stories got told. Frontdoors Media has shared a fuller tribute to her life and legacy for anyone who wants to read more.

It’s been just beyond a year since she transported to a cloud above.  Yet she still lives in this community,  thanks to a lifetime of work that will never be forgotten.