Terry Ryan
Vice President for Ohio Programs & Policy
Terry Ryan is vice-president for Ohio Programs and Policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute/Foundation. He leads all Ohio operations, which include charter school sponsorship, grantmaking and Fordham’s state research and policy efforts. Ryan is a 2008 New Schools Venture Fund/Aspen Institute fellow and a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Ryan has worked closely on a number of statewide charter school efforts in Ohio including the launch of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools and the creation of the Ohio Charter School Sponsorship Institute. Both of these programs received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. Terry is current board treasurer for the non-profit School Choice Ohio, and served as board chair for the non-profit charter school support organization Keys to Improving Dayton Schools, Inc. Ryan has published numerous editorials in newspapers around Ohio and in the Ohio Education Gadfly, and is widely quoted in state and national publications. He is co-author, with Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Mike Lafferty, of Ohio Education Reform Challenges: Lessons from the Front Lines (Palgrave Macmillan), and he co-authored the book --The Unfinished Revolution with the English educator John Abbott. Ryan has worked on education reform issues in both the US and the UK since 1995. Upon receiving his Master’s degree in political economy in 1994, Ryan was awarded the Paterson International Fellowship from the University of Denver to work with educational policy makers in Warsaw, Poland. Ryan is happily married and has two daughters.