In the summer of 2012, Ryan was recruited to be the Port Coquitlam Sport Alliance’s inaugural Executive Director.  He began the position in September 2012 and brings a vast amount of experience in all aspects of sport to the region.

 

He has worked diligently alongside local stakeholders to design and implement such as the annual Sport Awards and Port Coq. Sport Hall of Fame along with facilitating new events coming to town including collaboration with Mayor, Council and Sr. City staff to launch the PoCo Grand Prix professional bike race.
 

In additional to his role with the Port Coquitlam Sports Alliance, he works with the Vancouver Whitecaps FC overseeing their athlete transition program and leading their North American Showcase events.  His company, GameChanger-Sport Advancement, runs multiple sports events throughout the lower mainland.  He is part of the founding management team for KitsFest, a multi-sport festival that attracts thousands of competitors and spectators each year to Kitsilano Beach.

 

Ryan was part of the founding team that built the $200,000 Odlum Brown VanOpen professional tennis tournament that saw their creation rise to become the world's largest Challenger Series event. In helping lead the build of the event for 14 years (2002-2015), he also served as the Tournament Director. He was the Chief Executive Officer for Tennis BC (provincial sport association) for nearly a decade (2004 to September 2012). During this time, the association developed school and community programs, worked closely on facility initiatives with all levels of government staff and officials, from municipal through to provincial.  He was a leader in bringing professional tennis back to the BC through building the VanOpen and by working with multiple agencies to bring together Canada’s 2012 Davis Cup tie vs. France and Canada’s 2007 Fed Cup tie vs. Israel.  He served as the Event Manager for both these Davis Cup and Fed Cup events.

 

Ryan also founded College Knowledge, a company that has successfully worked with over 800+ individual student-athletes and their parents from all sports in gaining athletic and academic scholarships to major universities across Canada (U-Sports) and the United States (NCAA).  During this time he developed recruiting camps and transition programs for multiple national and provincial associations.

 

Ryan grew up competing in rugby, track, tennis and other high school varsity sports.  He earned a full athletic scholarship to the University of Illinois for tennis where he graduated with a degree in marketing and public relations.  He earned 3 X All-Big Ten Conference Player Awards in addition to earning an NCAA Div.1 Rookie of the Year honour.   Ryan travelled internationally while competing on the professional tennis tour and held a world-ranking in both singles and doubles for six years.  He held athlete sponsorships from Nike, Adidas, Oakley, and PowerBar.

 

His coaching experience includes serving as interim-national coach for Egypt in Cairo where he trained the junior and U21 teams for the African Games as well as served as Canada’s Pan-American Games team coach in 2003.

 

Ryan brings his extensive knowledge in program building, member services, policy planning, and event management to grow a healthy and thriving sport community.

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