Ryan currently serves as the City’s Emergency Management Director since August 2022. He has over 20 years of experience in emergency management in both the private and public sectors.
Some of his previous work entailed overseeing the United States Postal Service (USPS) Emergency Response Program for the State of Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, resulting from the 2001 anthrax attacks on Capitol Hill. He was responsible for the Lakeland Region emergency management program (Milwaukee, Madison, Wausau, Green Bay, and Iron Mountain) reporting to the Postmaster General.
He served as a member of the EPA’s Superfund Technical Assessment Response Team(START) in Chicago, part of the Bio-Watch Program, providing HazMat emergency response and emergency management in Cook County. Ryan conducted terrorism threat assessments for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (Region 4) out of Des Plaines, IL working alongside local emergency planning committees in Cook County. He was responsible for consequence management planning relating to biological and chemical attacks in Chicago, utilizing EPA (CAMEO) Computer Aided Management Emergency Operations software to simulate attacks.
Ryan was also a senior consultant with Russell Phillips and Associates more recently known as Jensen Hughes. Ryan provided hospital emergency management services nationally, operating out of the New England region (Boston, New York, and Connecticut, etc.).He assisted hospitals and healthcare facilities throughout the country maintain JCAHO accreditation requirements in accordance with emergency management standards.
From there Ryan took a position with Kaiser Permanente in the San Francisco Bay Area to serve as their Emergency Manager. Ryan comes to us from the Bay Area where recently he was serving as the Disaster Response Manager for the Menlo Park Fire Protection District and was part of the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Task Force( California Task Force 3) for the past thirteen years as a Plans Manager. Before entering the emergency management field, Ryan worked for the North Shore Fire Department as a Paid-on Call Firefighter in Brown Deer, Wisconsin, and as an Emergency Service Coordinator with Wauwatosa Fire Department.
Ryan has a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Administration with a Specialization in Management; and an Associate Degree in Fire Science. A recent graduate of the FEMA Advanced Emergency Management Academy, a Certified Emergency Manager from the International Association of Emergency Managers, a Certified Emergency Management Specialist with the California Governors of Emergency Services, a Certified Master Exercise Practitioner with FEMA, a Certified Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) Assessor through the Emergency Management Accreditation Program(EMAP); as well as completed two executive public safety leadership programs at Stanford University and the University of Southern California.