Ryan Johnson leads the Office of Strategic Partnerships (OSP). OSP helps the agency more fully and effectively utilize partnerships as a means to achieving the agency’s mission. Created in 2016, OSP is unifying the agency’s approach to strategic partnerships and institutional relationship management and helping to cultivate a network of private sector, public sector, and civil society partners that can increase innovation in and the scale, impact, visibility, and sustainability of MCC operations and investments. To accomplish its mandate, OSP works closely with other teams in the agency, and by extension, MCC country counterparts, to develop the vision, strategy, tools, knowledge, and relationships necessary for MCC and country teams to forge and maintain meaningful partnerships.
Ryan joined MCC in January 2017 and has two decades of experience in strategy development, cross-sector partnerships, technology and program delivery. Ryan joined the Office of Strategic Partnerships from Accenture, where he served on the leadership team for Accenture Development Partnerships (ADP), Accenture’s international development practice. Ryan was responsible for mobilizing ADP’s strategy, digital, technology, and organizational strengthening practice groups; leading ADP’s opportunity development and institutional relationship management for 55 different international NGO, corporate, foundation, and government clients; and overseeing a team of 25 relationship managers across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America. Ryan recently led the development of partnership strategies for two global resilience partnerships: The One Billion Coalition, a partnership championed by the International Federation of the Red Cross; and the Global Resilience Partnership, a $150 million initiative of the Rockefeller Foundation, USAID, and Sida. Ryan has collaborated on publications such as Building a Better International NGO: Greater than the Sum of the Parts? and “Convergence Economy: Rethinking International Development in a Converging World”.
From 2012-2014 Ryan served a two-year secondment at Catholic Relief Services as CRS’s first Director of Foundation and Corporate Engagement. While at CRS, Ryan led the development of CRS’s corporate partnership strategy and oversaw the agency’s entry into impact investing. He led the design and planning for the Vatican’s first-ever impact investing-themed convening, which CRS and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace co-hosted in Rome in 2014. Prior to CRS, Ryan served as ADP’s first Global Health Lead, helping to form partnerships with Accenture’s commercial life sciences and pharmaceuticals clients. In 2008, Ryan lived in Kenya to help lead the mobilization and launch of the Partnership for an HIV-Free Generation, a 19-company public private partnership championed by the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) that brought technology and program innovations to youth HIV-prevention. Ryan began his work with Accenture in Washington, DC serving U.S. federal government clients, including the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Postal Service, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Ryan holds a Bachelor of Arts in international relations from Georgetown University and a Master in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where he was named a Lucius N. Littauer Fellow and member of the Harvard Corporate Social Responsibility Scholars & Practitioners Network.
In his personal time, Ryan enjoys spending time with his wife and two young sons at their home in Baltimore. He seeks to run one half-marathon and to explore one new U.S. state or country per year. He is an FAA-licensed pilot and an aviation fanatic. Ryan’s parents both served on active duty with the U.S. Air Force and he attended seven different schools prior to high school as a result of family moves.