Young Entrepeneurial Council

Ryan Stephens is an entrepreneurial minded 20-something who is extremely passionate about both marketing and helping people. He believes in the power of the Internet and its ability to cultivate conversations, relationships and the spread of ideas.

Despite a day job, Ryan's been unable to escape his entrepreneurial mentality. He started Ryan Stephens Marketing as a strategic consulting and professional development entity that specializes in relationship marketing for the small business owner. The emphasis centers around leveraging social technology to helping small business owners establish better relationships with co-workers, fellow business people, and most importantly clientele.

Some of his specialties include:

> Creating integrated digital strategies that drive revenue
> Establishing a relationship between social media metrics and business metrics
> Facilitating intelligent growth for online communities
> Leveraging social technologies to scale external marketing efforts and an internal culture of sharing

Formerly the Director of Community for Sports Media Challenge. The job afforded Ryan the opportunity to use his experience with social technologies to create marketing strategies for athletes, Division I programs, and other sports industry brands such as ESPN and Conference USA.

He's worked on consulting projects with brands such as Apple, OfficeMax, and HEB Grocery.

Finally, he also gained valuable entrepreneurship experience working with Oates Specialties, one of the foremost suppliers of innovative training devices for athletes, particularly the consummate pitcher.