Reyes grew up in an impoverished area of Caracas,[2] and so her main aim was to escape poverty,[2][3] never dreaming of being a journalist.

She was an international prize scholar of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation[4] and won a grant from the Organization of American States to do a one-month course on Andean Integration at the Pontifical Xavierian University in Bogotá.

[5] Reyes has been a professor of postgraduate studies in Political communication at Simón Bolívar University (USB).

[9] In 2015, with colleagues Laura Weffer and Josefina Ruggiero she created a new independent digital media body, Efecto Cocuyo, with the slogan "Journalism that illuminates".

[9] The idea for the website came after incidents where the founders had been persecuted for attempting journalistic freedom; Reyes herself was arraigned by the government for writing a piece about gasoline shortages in Venezuela.

[17] The 2018 Time Person of the Year was "The Guardians" – journalists refusing to stand down despite being persecuted for reporting the truth.