Ryan Research Consulting is led by Sarah Ryan, Ph.D.

Sarah began her career as a public school teacher, working with multilingual learners and students with disabilities in Wisconsin, Colorado and California. Since then, Sarah has sought out roles that bridge research, policy, and evidence use. She has worked closely with education and government agencies, non-profits, and foundations across the nation to provide research expertise and technical assistance around research and evidence use. Her substantive expertise spans a range of critical issues from access to early learning, to content area instruction in the elementary and middle grades, to programs and policies that prepare high school-age youth for career and postsecondary learning. Her background in practice drives Sarah’s focus on partnering with policymakers and practitioners to build and use evidence that improves the experiences and outcomes of diverse populations, their schools, and their communities. Read more about Sarah here.

Simply put, we connect decisionmakers to evidence that can improve the experiences and outcomes of children and young adults. We are particularly passionate about generating, making sense of, and applying evidence to local needs and conditions together with local partners.

Decisionmakers face a constant stream of new evidence about how to improve the experiences and outcomes of children and young adults. The sheer volume makes it challenging to keep up. Even more challenging is connecting all this evidence to local context.

Yet when research evidence is timely, interpretable, and adaptive to local context, it is a powerful tool for productive change. This transformative potential of “evidence done right” drives our passion for helping leaders find, generate, and use research in ways that value and respect local systems, conditions, and people.

From education and government agencies to nonprofits and from research organizations to program and product developers, we work with a range of partners.