An early employee (#6) at Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, he’s spent the last 13 years in key roles of increasing responsibility with a focus on brand, strategy, and communications, helping to grow the company into a national brand—from 5 shops to 85+ shops, from a couple Ms to $100M+.
A creative thinker—flexibly left- and right-brained—who can reverse engineer an outcome but also practices emotional branding, Ryan believes the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts, and that, deep down, what everybody wants is to feel less alone and fully alive. And that the prize for companies who are willing to deliver against those desires—universal to the human condition—is nothing less than irrationally loyal customers for life.
Currently at Jeni’s, Ryan is the head of brand strategy, and the architect of recent culture-making collabs with Tyler, The Creator, Dolly Parton, and Ted Lasso. He’s been working at the intersection of business, social technology, and human behavior for as long as he can remember… long enough to know that being online is never as good as being wholly present, in the moment, IRL.
