Kevin P. Ryan ’85 B.A.
New York, New York
Kevin Ryan is an accomplished Internet entrepreneur. He is the Founder and Chairman of Gilt Groupe, an innovative e-commerce company with business lines in men’s, women’s, and children’s apparel and accessories, home decor, travel, and food. An economics major at Yale, Mr. Ryan started his career in investment banking with Prudential Investment Corporation in both New York and London. He then pursued an M.B.A., earning his degree from INSEAD in 1990. After working at Euro Disney, Mr. Ryan returned to the United States to begin a job as Senior Vice President of Business and Finance at United Media, an editorial column and comic strip newspaper syndication service. From 1996 to 2005, he served as the first President and subsequently Chief Executive Officer of DoubleClick, the Internet advertising company that grew from fifteen employees to a publicly traded international leader with 1,500 employees by 2005; it was sold to Google in 2007. From 2005 to the present, together with DoubleClick’s Chief Technology Officer and Cofounder, Dwight Merriman, Mr. Ryan founded Gilt Groupe; founded and is Chairman of online publisher Business Insider; and is Cofounder and Chairman of 10gen, an open source database. Kevin serves on the board Human Rights Watch, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. At Yale, he serves on the President’s Council on International Activities, the President’s Advisory Committee on Digital Yale, and the University Council Committee on Reputation. He also served on the University Council Committee on Digital Yale. Mr. Ryan was elected Alumni Fellow in 2012.
