Joan Ryan

About Joan Ryan

An experienced, conversational speaker on a range of topics, particularly team chemistry, high performance and resilience, Joan Ryan is an award-winning journalist, author and media consultant.She was a pioneer in sports journalism as one of the first female sports columnists in the country. She covered every major sporting event from the Super Bowl and the World Series to the Olympics and championship fights. Her sports columns and features earned 13 Associated Press Sports Editors Awards, the National Headliner Award, the Women’s Sports Foundation’s Journalism Award, and the prestigious Edgar A. Poe Award from the White House Correspondents Association for her four-part series about wounded soldiers. The first of her five books, “Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters’’ (1995, Doubleday) was a ground-breaking expose named one of the “Top 100 Sports Books of All Time’’ by Sports Illustrated and one of the “Top 50 Sports Books of All Time’’ by the Guardian. Joan was featured on Oprah, 60 Minutes, Nightline, the Today Show, People magazine, the New Yorker, the New York Times, Time magazine and other media around the country. Her 2015 book,\"Molina: The Story of a Father Who Raised an Unlikely Baseball Dynasty\'\'(Simon & Schuster), was a finalist for the 2015 PEN Literary Award.Her current book,\"Intangibles: Unlocking the Science and Soul of Team Chemistry\'\'(Little, Brown, 2020), draws from nearly two-hundred previously unpublished interviews—including those with Steve Kerr, Barry Bonds and General Stanley McChrystal—and whisks readers from the ballpark to the research lab on an ambitious quest to understand the seemingly indefinable phenomenon called team chemistry. Ten years in the making, Intangibles makes the case that team chemistry is a biological construct with a single function: to elevate performance. Joan has been the senior media advisor to the San Francisco Giants since 2008 - and has three World Series rings to show for it.

Experience

1. Senior Media Consultant

   San Francisco Giants

   Jan 2008 — Present · San Francisco, CA, US

Education

• University of Florida

  Bachelor's, Journalism

  1977 — 1981

• University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications

  Bachelor's, Journalism

  1981