Jim Ryan

Jim Ryan served as a dean at Harvard and then as president of the University of Virginia. During his 12 years of leadership, he learned that the right questions matter more than the right answers. His work centers on how leaders use questions to sharpen judgment, build trust and turn conflict into clarity. As dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Ryan delivered a 2016 commencement speech on five essential questions that went viral, viewed millions of times and translated into multiple languages. The speech became Wait, What? And Life's Other Essential Questions (2017), a New York Times bestseller that distills how leaders listen, learn and lead under pressure.

Ryan's forthcoming How About Never? And Other Essential Questions For Leadership and Life (2027) extends that framework into seven questions that define exceptional leadership, from basic questions of identity and purpose to the operational challenges of decision-making and knowing when to change course. The framework is anchored in the conviction that true leadership means putting the interests of the organization above your own. As the ninth president of the University of Virginia (2018–2025), Ryan chaired the Atlantic Coast Conference Board of Directors and the Council of Presidents. He has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and authored widely cited scholarship on education law and educational opportunity, including Five Miles Away, A World Apart (Oxford University Press, 2010).