Jan Ryan is a path maker.
Serial Entrepreneur and Tech Leader, Board Director, Strategic Advisor, Professor, and Acclaimed Champion of Female Founders.
“I love everything about building teams and scaling ideas, and teaching others the lessons I’ve learning in doing so, whether they be startups, students, or Boards helping a portfolio company to enter a new market.” – Jan Ryan
MEET JAN
Throughout her career, Jan has been drawn to emerging spaces and disruptive sectors. In fact, her leadership roles read as a series of industry firsts because of the transformative era of technology where she grew into her own as a leader. But through it all, whether as Founder, CEO, or strategic advisor, Jan has been known for her obsession with the customer and revenue, the front line –where a company meets its customers by delivery value. Jan created and modeled a customer-first, “outside-in” methodology for growing a business long before this concept became popular, and she credits this early passion for her consistent success. A convergence of skills and stories from both early-stage and large established brands marks her style and the insights she shares with clients, startups, and startups.
“Wake up every morning more in love with ways to make your customers’ lives better.”
– Jan’s long-standing mantra
EARLY CHAMPION OF
FEMALE ENTREPRENEURS
Women@Austin: Empowering women with a killer advantage: permission to break the old rules.
In 2013, after her company Social Dynamx had been acquired, Jan Ryan launched Women@Austin with a big vision - to make Austin the most accessible, supportive city in the nation for female entrepreneurs. Austin had long been a magnet for innovative leaders, but female-led companies were scarce. Having gone from idea to exit a couple of times herself, Jan was keenly aware of how different the journey can be for women. Most female founders were still operating in silos at that time, feeling invisible, and having to re-interpret the ecosystem through a male lens in order to find mentors and connect.
Women@Austin (now called Beam Angel Network) went on to attract hundreds of women, and was fueled by a powerful Steering Committee composed of Austin’s most successful female leaders and entrepreneurs. Jan’s bet was right - when you bring smart, capable women around a problem, change happens. This organization, and the movement it started, is widely credited with a change in the landscape of Austin’s ecosystem for female founders, with increased visibility, equipping, and access to capital.
Austin Mayor Lee Leffingwell declared Feb 13, 2015, “Women@Austin Day” in Austin. “Women@Austin has been a force of change that will be felt in Austin throughout the next decade.”
FACULTY - UT AUSTIN
Professor and former Executive Director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation
With a passion for tomorrow's change leaders, Jan was recruited to the Univ. of Texas in 2017 to build an entrepreneurship program for Creatives, housed in the College of Fine Arts (COFA). In 2018 she established the first-ever “Center for Creative Entrepreneurship” to help students in creative industries bring their innovations to market.
Jan also brought her passion for female entrepreneurs to UT in a big way. She was an early architect in creating the campus-wide Kendra Scott Women’s Entrepreneurial and Leadership Institute (KSWEL), now housed in COFA, to help equip and empower this next generation of female entrepreneurs. She is also on the inaugural Women’s Initiative for Entrepreneurship and Leadership Development Board at the University.
Jan designed and has taught two sets of curricular offerings while at UT. 1) She created the first-ever Women in Entrepreneurship course, a multi-disciplinary class that has become popular across campus, and is now by application only. Women in Entrepreneurship is cross-listed by McCombs Business School in the Entrepreneurship minor, and in 2020 became a foundational offering for the KS WEL Institute, with Kendra Scott becoming a co-instructor. 2) She also authored the “Creative Entrepreneurship,” inaugural entrepreneurship course in the College of Fine Arts, another first-ever offering that is purpose built to advance creative ideas and bring the most promising to market.
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