Dan Ryan (born June 21, 1962) is an American non-profit executive and politician who was elected to the Portland City Council on August 12, 2020. Ryan defeated Multnomah County Commissioner

Loretta Smith Loretta Smith (born 1966) is an American politician and businesswoman who served as a Multnomah County, Oregon, Multnomah County commissioner from 2011 to 2018. She ran unsuccessful campaigns for Portland City Commission, Portland City Council i ...

in a runoff election to succeed

Nick Fish Nicholas Stuyvesant Fish (September 30, 1958 – January 2, 2020) was an American politician and lawyer who served as a Commissioner of Portland, Oregon from 2008 to 2020. A Democrat, Fish worked with Portland Parks & Recreation, the Portland H ...

, who died of stomach cancer on January 2, 2020. Ryan will serve for the remainder of Fish's term, which ends in 2022.

Early life and education

Ryan was born in

North Portland, Oregon North Portland is one of the six sextants of Portland, Oregon. North Portland is a diverse mixture of residential, commercial, and industrial areas. It includes the Portland International Raceway, the University of Portland, and massive cargo faci ...

, the youngest of eight children. Ryan was the first in his family to graduate from college. Ryan earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc, and its co-founder, billion ...

and took graduate courses at

The New School The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...

Career

Prior to announcing his candidacy for Portland City Council, Ryan worked as an administrator at

Portland State University Portland State University (PSU) is a public research university in Portland, Oregon. It was founded in 1946 as a post-secondary educational institution for World War II veterans. It evolved into a four-year college over the following two decades ...

, where he managed the school's first

capital campaign Fundraising or fund-raising is the process of seeking and gathering voluntary financial contributions by engaging individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gathe ...

. Ryan served as a member of the Portland School Board from 2005 to 2008, and was the CEO of All Hands Raised, an education non-profit, from 2008 to 2019. Ryan is the third

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term is a ...

person elected as a commissioner of Portland, and the first to have been diagnosed with

HIV The human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV) are two species of ''Lentivirus'' (a subgroup of retrovirus) that infect humans. Over time, they cause acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in which progressive failure of the immune ...

. Upon his election in August, Ryan called for an end to the 2020 Portland protests and committed to establishing a "peace summit" between local politicians and activists. Ryan assumed office on September 9, 2020. During his campaign, Ryan was endorsed by City Commissioner

Jo Ann Hardesty Jo Ann A. Hardesty (formely Bowman, born October 15, 1957) is an American Democratic politician in the U.S. state of Oregon who served as a Portland City commissioner from 2019 to 2022. She previously served in the Oregon House of Representati ...

and former Governor

Barbara Roberts Barbara Kay Roberts (née Hughey; born December 21, 1936) is an American politician from the state of Oregon. A native of the state, she served as the 34th Governor of Oregon from 1991 to 1995. She was the first woman to serve as Oregon governo ...

Personal life

While living in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in 1986, Ryan was diagnosed with

. In 1996, Ryan was diagnosed with

pneumocystis The Pneumocystidomycetes are a class of ascomycete fungi. It includes the single order Pneumocystidales, which contains the single monotypic family Pneumocystidaceae, which in turn contains the genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic r ...

and was given between six months and a year to live. He then returned from

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

, where he was living at the time, to his hometown of

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

, expecting to die soon.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ryan, Dan 1962 births 21st-century American politicians Living people LGBT city councillors from the United States Oregon Democrats People with HIV/AIDS Portland City Council members (Oregon) School board members in Oregon University of Oregon alumni 21st-century LGBT people