Ryan Hays

Ryan Hays serves as Executive Vice President and the Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer at the University of Cincinnati. He chairs the Office of Innovation, encompassing the 1819 Innovation Hub and the Cincinnati Innovation District. Additionally, Hays oversees the university’s Department of Marketing and Communications and serves as Senior Adviser to the President and the Board of Trustees.

From 2012 to 2022, Hays held the position of UC's Chief of Staff to the President, where he managed the Offices of the President and the Board of Trustees. He served as the primary architect of the university’s strategic direction through the initiatives "Next Lives Here" and the previous strategic plan, "Creating Our Third Century." Hays was UC's Interim Director of Athletics in 2019 and co-led the university’s comprehensive, enterprise-wide response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Hays chaired the board of directors of the University of Cincinnati Research Institute (UCRI) from 2014 to 2022, laying the groundwork for the Office of Innovation. During his tenure, he secured a $40 million investment to establish the 1819 Innovation Hub, hiring the university’s first chief innovation officer. In 2020, Hays helped launch the Cincinnati Innovation District.

Before joining UC, Hays was Assistant Dean of the Faculty at Princeton University, responsible for co-managing a $600 million faculty budget. He oversaw the appointment of approximately 500 lecturers and visiting professors across all four academic divisions: humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. Hays facilitated the appointment of all faculty leaders of academic centers, institutes and programs, as well as members of departmental advisory councils.

Prior to his role at Princeton, Hays worked with the Board of Trustees at Emory University, focusing on strategic planning, trustee recruitment and board development. While at Emory, he taught in the Graduate Institute for the Liberal Arts (ILA), the nation's oldest interdisciplinary doctoral program.

Hays began his career as special assistant to the dean of the Tucker Foundation at Dartmouth College. In 1997 he played a vital role in launching the Presidents’ Summit for America’s Future under the direction of retired Gen. Colin Powell.

Hays holds a B.A. from DePauw University and a Ph.D. in psychoanalytic studies and postmodern theory from Emory University. His dissertation on Sigmund Freud is recognized as one of the top 20 most-accessed scholarly works on ProQuest, an extensive electronic library of more than 2.1 million dissertations and theses.

In 2023, Hays published "Strategists First: How To Defeat the Strategy Trap," a comprehensive guide designed to illuminate the essential insights every strategist should possess.