young enterpreneur 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.

Ryan is employed full-time as a Marketing Coordinator for the #1-ranked cancer hospital in the United States, MD Anderson. He's dedicated to the Proton Therapy Center (one of 9 active centers in the country).  Proton therapy is an advanced type of radiation treatment that uses a beam of protons to irradiate – or deliver radiation – directly to the tumor, destroying cancer cells while sparing surrounding healthy tissue and other critical areas or vital organs. Ryan leads a lot of the organization's social business efforts and web content in an effort to showcase clinical expertise, patient stories, and raise awareness of proton therapy as a viable treatment option for many types of cancer.

Despite his 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 specialities 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.