Ryan M. Davis is a cultural program leader and event producer, dedicated to bringing ideas to life onstage and creating experiences that inform and inspire audiences across a range of media platforms.
He is the founding Executive Director of KQED Live, the live journalism, storytelling, and performance series at the Bay Area’s outlet for NPR, PBS, and local public media.
Previously, he served as Associate Director at Stanford University's professional performing arts center. There, he curated and produced theater, dance, screenings, lectures, and public discussions, featuring world-class artists and influential thinkers addressing a wide range of contemporary issues.
He studied dramaturgy, creative producing, and theater criticism at the Yale School of Drama, where he was awarded both the John W. Gassner Memorial Prize for criticism and the George Pierce Baker Fellowship. His writing on contemporary theater, dance, and performance art has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Drama Review, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art and Theater, where he served as Associate Editor. He has lectured at Mount Holyoke, Yale College, Yale School of Drama, University of San Francisco, and Stanford.
A southern boy from the Creole bayou,
Ryan has worked at numerous theaters and live arts festivals across the country, from his hometown of New Orleans, to New York and New England, to the San Francisco Bay Area.