Audrey Ryan joined People & Performance Strategies on June 1st. She heads up the outreach and communication efforts for the company and will also coordinate charitable initiatives on behalf of the team. Ryan is a perfect fit when it comes to our mission to help companies hire and manage stellar teams. She’s passionate about the progress sparked when individuals become more self-aware. Ryan says, “It’s been my experience working in sales and marketing, that you simply must understand what your client is trying to communicate and a difference in communication style can’t be what prohibits you from solving their problems. Through great mentors, I learned early in my career to bridge the gap
and work fluidly with people that have different styles. From developing these types of skills, I was able to become more of an asset for the people I’ve worked with because I could offer better solutions sourced from our collaborative communication.”
“Joining People & Performance Strategies has been a highlight of my professional life because I’m able to apply the culmination of my skills and experience toward a goal of getting more people to use communication and leadership disciplines. Not only can they have life-changing positive effects on a person’s professional trajectory, but in their personal life as well,” says Ryan.
Ryan is from the cotton farming town of Lubbock, Texas. She lived in Albuquerque, NM, and Santa Clara, CA prior to arriving in Austin, five years ago. A self-proclaimed born communicator, Ryan grew up participating in Odyssey of the Mind competitions instead of team sports, which she says was for the best, since she is disastrously uncoordinated.
Ryan studied Public Relations at Texas Tech University and actually started her marketing career as a college freshman. Between classes she worked for a local PR agency, running live promotions at sporting events and around campus for major corporations. After graduating at 20 years old, she moved to Albuquerque, NM and worked in venue marketing for an 8,000 seat arena managed by Spectra, a Comcast company.
Ryan says, “Venue marketing is how an entertainment venue brings in revenue. It involves working very closely with the advertisers and sponsors to create brand exposure and memorable customer experiences during live events.” She explains, “The key to orchestrating a home run for our clients was really listening to them and gathering every bit of information about their main objectives and target audience. In event marketing, you don’t get a second chance to make it work.”
Ryan read books like Emotional Intelligence and every book authored by Bob Burge, always working to sharpen her communication skills because she viewed them as key to being able to help solve problems for people, mobilize teams, and deliver positive results.
Ryan says, “It was a critical time for just about every industry in 2009 and 2010, and we had to be as innovative as possible coming up with activation tactics that worked and made the most of finite budgets. We had to be hitting on all cylinders, and communication in team collaborations was at the heart of it all.”
In 2011 Ryan joined the San Francisco 49ers on a small team that secured 100% of financing for the team’s new stadium in Santa Clara, California. Then in 2014, she and her husband moved back to Texas for her husband’s career opportunity and to be closer to family. There she led sales and marketing for a couple of out of state software companies from their home in Austin, Texas.
About her new role, Ryan says, “I simply could not pass up the opportunity to join the People & Performance Strategies team. To be able to represent a firm that teaches the same skills that ‘punched my ticket’ for virtually every opportunity I’ve ever had is humbling. To see it come full circle, well, it just feels like it’s meant to be.”
We’re excited to welcome Audrey Ryan to our amazing team of professionals and look forward to the work ahead.