"A job worth doing is worth doing right, but don't let perfection become the enemy of the good."

Michael J. Ryan, Jr.

Michael Ryan’s 25-year career spans accounting, law, finance, regulatory compliance and general company operations.  His experiences include working with various types of organizations of different sizes and interacting with the full range of personalities.  He strives to work collaboratively with people, bring out the best in others to seek consensus-based solutions, but when a consensus is unachievable, Michael is decisive, giving reasonable consideration to the facts and circumstances, balancing the risks and rewards and respecting the experiences and views of others.

Michael is a Maryland native who began working at an early age, splitting his time between his dad’s choose and cut Christmas Tree Farm and his grandfather’s a one-person electrical contracting business operated from a Ford van.  During high school he also worked in the family’s restaurant and during college at IBM, first servicing photocopiers and then “burning-in” personal computers according to each customer’s specifications.

Michael graduated from Calvert Hall College High School in Towson, MD and earned his B.S in accountancy from Villanova University in 1985 (exciting college experience – on April 1, 1985 Villanova was the first, and so far the only, unranked team to win the NCAA Men's Basketball National Championship: Villanova 66 – Georgetown 64).  Michael began his professional career working as an account in Baltimore for Price Waterhouse & Co. ("PW" – nka pwc).  During his three years with PW, he rose to the level of Senior Accountant and earned his CPA license.

Michael left PW to attend Catholic University School of Law in Washington, D,C., where he served as Associate Editor of the Law Review and currently teaches the Securities Market Regulation Seminar during the fall semester.  Since graduating law school and being admitted to the Maryland Bar, Michael has held positions with increasing responsibility.  These include serving as an attorney for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, executive vice president and general counsel of the American Stock Exchange and president and chief operating officer of PROXY Governance, Inc., a firm that conducted research on a wide range of global public companies and recommended to institutional investors on how to vote their corporate proxies.

Michael has also worked for several trade associations and a subsidiary of the New York Stock Exchange, focusing on corporate governance and capital markets public policy issues.  Michael has served on numerous industry panels, written articles for various industry publications, testified on Capitol Hill and has been quoted in a range of newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal.
Michael lives in Bethesda, MD and has two high school-aged children.  He enjoys hiking and camping – he has attended four Outward Bound Schools and he and his son have a tradition since January 2009 to camp outside at least one night every month … that’s now more than 100 months in a row.  Michael is also a long-distance runner and has run seven marathons, including the Boston Marathon three times, though today he focuses more on 10-mile and half-marathon races.