Don Ryan is a founding Board Member of the National Center for Healthy Housing, having served on the NCHH Board since its inception in 1992. Mr. Ryan plays a key role in NCHH decision-making by serving on multiple Board committees, including the executive and finance committees. As vice president for Policy at Second Nature, a national nonprofit organization, Mr. Ryan directs their national policy and advocacy efforts in Washington, DC. Working closely with allied organizations, Ryan helps leverage the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment and Higher Education Associations Sustainability Consortium networks to win policy changes that advance sustainability and climate action in the higher education sector.
Over the past three decades, Mr. Ryan has worked in Washington in the executive branch, in Congress, and in the public interest community on environmental, transportation, and housing policy issues. Prior to joining Second Nature, he served as staff director to three expert panels of the National Academy of Public Administration, including leading a study to help federal environmental and natural resource agencies design the institutional structures for a national system of environmental indicators.
From 1990-2005, Mr. Ryan served as co-founder and executive director of the Alliance to End Childhood Lead Poisoning, NCHH's sister organization. Under Ryan's leadership, the Alliance became the foremost national advocacy organization working to protect children from lead poisoning, helping to achieve breakthrough progress in protecting children from lead poisoning and other health hazards in their homes. He played an instrumental part in Congress' enactment of the landmark federal lead poisoning prevention law in 1992 that shifted the approach from reaction to prevention and built a powerful network of grassroots advocates, practitioners, and experts that lobbied Congress and federal agencies to protect children at highest risk.
As professional staff to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, Mr. Ryan oversaw the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency for eight years. At the U.S. Department of Transportation, he handled funding for mass transit and highway programs and coordinated energy conservation strategies across the transportation sector during the 1970s energy crisis.
In addition to NCHH, Mr. Ryan also serves on the board of directors of Occupational Knowledge, Inc. Mr. Ryan has a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning from George Washington University and a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the University of Southern Mississippi.