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Ryan Allis Biography

Ryan Allis is the co-founder and CEO of iContact, a leading provider of email marketing tools for small businesses. Ryan has built North Carolina-based iContact from its start in 2003 to its current size with more than 175 employees, 50,000 customers, and $28 million in annual sales, while raising $10.8 million to grow the firm. Ryan was named as one of the Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25 and Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year for the Carolinas in 2008. He is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book Zero to One Million. Currently the board chairman for Nourish International, Mr. Allis is also a social entrepreneur and the founder of the Humanity Campaign, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing poverty and hunger and increasing access to education, health care, technology, clean water, and nutrition.

Longer Bio

Ryan P. Allis is a technology entrepreneur and social entrepreneur from North Carolina, USA. Ryan has been an entrepreneur since he started Allis Computing at age 11 in 1995.

Today, Ryan is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of iContact, the leading provider of email marketing services to small businesses and non-profit organizations. Ryan has built North Carolina-based iContact from its start in July 2003 to its current size with over 175 employees, 50,000 customers, and $28 million in annual sales. In 2008, iContact was named the fastest growing software company in North Carolina by INC Magazine. iContact has raised $10.8M in venture capital from NC IDEA, Updata Partners, and North Atlantic Capital.

Ryan is the author of the book Zero to One Million, published by McGraw-Hill in February 2008, which reached the Wall Street Journal Bestseller list. In 2005, Ryan was named by BusinessWeek as one of the “Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25″ and in 2008 he received Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the Carolinas along with his partner and iContact co-founder Aaron Houghton.

On the social entrepreneur side, Ryan hosts monthly social entrepreneur meetups at his house in Chapel Hill. He is the founder of The Humanity Campaign, a non-profit grant-making organization that provides support to community-based organizations in the developing world working in the fields of education, rural healthcare, conflict resolution, nutrition, human rights, and technology. Ryan travels each year to East Africa to visit the non-profit organizations The Humanity Campaign supports. In July 2009, he visited 19 non-profits and community-based organizations in Kenya and Uganda including Carolina for Kibera in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya, Concerned Parents Association in Lira, Uganda and Invisible Children in Gulu, Uganda.

Ryan is currently the Board Chairman for Nourish International, which has chapters at 21 colleges across the United States. Nourish teaches entrepreneurship to college students and uses the net profits from student ventures to invest in social entrepreneurs and community-based organizations in the developing world focused on eliminating extreme poverty and hunger in our lifetime.

Ryan is a past-board member of Leadership Triangle, EO Raleigh-Durham, the Council for Entrepreneurial Development, and J unior Achievement of Eastern NC. Ryan is a 2009 honorary StartingBloc Fellow and has given keynote addresses on social entrepreneurship at the 2009 MIT IDEAS Competition and the 2009 StartingBloc Yale Institute for Social Innovation. He is also a member of the British Council’s TN2020 Network.

Ryan attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was an economics major and a Blanchard Scholar. Ryan is currently enrolled in the EO/MIT Entrepreneurial Masters Program (EMP).

Ryan is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences, events, and universities on the topics of entrepreneurship, marketing, finding and following your passion, social entrepreneurship, and the potential Generation Y has to change the world. He currently speaks to about 8000 people per year on the topic of pursuing life as a passionate entrepreneur and social entrepreneur.

As a team leader with the Lead America Entrepreneurship Conference in 2004, Ryan traveled the United States teaching entrepreneurship to high school students. In 2007 and 2008 as a speaker with the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour Ryan spoke at 30 colleges across the country.

Ryan has been featured on television on ABC News and The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch and in print in Fortune Small Business, Success Magazine, Entrepreneur, Investors’ Business Daily, the Daily Times of India, and Young Money Magazine.

Ryan is currently working on the manuscript for his next book Dare Mighty Things: How Entrepreneurs & Social Entrepreneurs Are Changing the World.

Ryan believes passionately in the power of business to do good. He is a firm believer that “the business of business is more than just business” He manages iContact’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program, which contributes 1% of its annual payroll to non-profit organizations locally and globally. In 2008 the iContact CSR Program contributed $55,000 to 37 non-profit organizations.