RYAN BYRNE
Richmond
Summary
Dynamic Creative Strategist and Executive Producer with a proven track record at Project Amnesia, adept at client relationship management and financial analysis. Spearheaded viral political media initiatives, driving millions of views and engagement. Skilled in project management, leveraging creativity and strategic insight to produce impactful multi-media content for high-profile clients.
Overview
2027
2027
years of professional experience
Work History
Creative Strategist & Executive Producer
Project Amnesia
2022 - Current
- Produce multi-media content (animation, film, music) for a client roster including celebrities, comedians, and political campaigns (congressional, gubernatorial, state/local), ranging from entertainment and satirical explainers (comedy/history) to high-stakes political advocacy.
- Operationalize “political edutainment” as a strategic asset, creating viral IP shared by Hollywood talent and key political figures.
- Established an embedded animation newsroom in partnership with the Lincoln Project PAC (2024 Cycle), for which I directed a rapid-response production pipeline, delivering reaction media that garnered millions of views and analysis by MSNBC hosts.
Director
COW PAC
2021 - 2024
- Directed a hybrid Political Action Committee producing viral film content as public advocacy.
- Partnered with DevinCow and other celebrity surrogates and influencers to create and distribute high-impact political media, driving engagement for candidates endorsed in congressional and gubernatorial races.
- Managed a multi-faceted operation, including all aspects of film production, financial oversight, FEC compliance, fundraising, merchandising, candidate vetting, and coordination with allied PACs.
- Handled media inquiries and cultivated relationships with key political journalists in print and television.
TV Producer
Breitenbach Creative+Media
2012 - 2020
- Served as a “roving story architect” across multiple tv reality series, engineering coherent narrative arcs from unstructured raw footage to salvage and shape distressed storylines.
- Acted as senior creative consultant on active productions, implementing real-time narrative adjustments (script-doctoring, story editing, etc.) for episodic coherence.
- Represented the production company in network pitches, analyzing corporate mandates and demographic trends to sell original formats.
- Deployed as “fixer” to remote locations to direct and produce proof-of-concept sizzles, nursing inchoate assets into viable commercial series.
- Wrote comprehensive series bibles and treatment decks to define tone, casting, and long-term story engines for unscripted projects.
Consultant
Bright Futures College Counseling
2007 - 2019
- Advise a high-end boutique firm of college admissions experts advising students (grades 7-12), college transfers, international students, and applicants for medical, law, business, pharmacy, nursing, physician’s assistant, graduate, and professional schools in the United States and United Kingdom.
- Counseling includes school targeting, portfolio development, internship placement, community service and volunteerism, scholarship research, and financial aid planning.
- Leverage insider insights as a former faculty admissions liaison to mentor college-bound students.
Visiting Assistant Professor
University Of Texas at Austin
2010 - 2012
- Faculty duties in the Middle Eastern Studies department included graduate advising/seminars and undergraduate classes in Aramaic, archaeology, and Dead Sea scrolls.
Assistant Professor (Tenure Track)
Rhodes College
2003 - 2008
- Offered undergraduate coursework in ancient and medieval history, foreign languages, archaeology, economic and political anthropology, and intensive writing.
- Faculty duties included academic advising; community outreach; service on college committees (including curriculum reform for decennial reaccreditation).
- Wrote successful development grants exceeding $250K.
- Served on the college admissions committee, reading hundreds of applications each year, as faculty liaison.
- Established, secured funding for, and directed a state-of-the-art scientific laboratory for archaeological research.
- Created and chaired a new archaeology program; developed and implemented the curriculum; secured grants for program growth; designed and directed innovative summer field school in historic and prehistoric archaeology.
Adjunct Professor of Ancient Studies
University of Maryland, Baltimore County, UMBC
2001 - 2003
Lecturer in Near Eastern Studies
The Johns Hopkins University
1999 - 2003
Science Teacher (9-12)
Gilbert High School, Anaheim UHSD
1995 - 1996
- Faculty duties included high school, ESL, and adult extension instruction in the natural sciences. Courses included chemistry, life science, physical science, and earth science.
Field Archaeologist
Israel Antiquities Authority
02.1994 - 12.1994
- Working principally in the Arava district under Deputy Director Rudolph Cohen, I oversaw large-scale excavations at the sites of En Hazeva, Moa, and several salvage projects throughout the country.
- Responsibilities for personnel oversight included as many as 180 workers provided by the Labor Ministry’s work assistance program.
- In the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem, I registered and archived thousands of artifacts; drafted translations of reports; and assisted the conservators of the Qumran manuscripts in the Rockefeller collection.
- Following the Oslo Accords, I participated in Operation Scroll, a comprehensive survey of all remaining unexamined caves in the Judean Desert
Videographer & Archivist
The 1939 Society & Chapman University
1990 - 1991
- Filmed and archived oral history testimonies of Holocaust survivors for one of the earliest and most comprehensive video archives in the United States (now housed at the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education).
- Worked with interviewers to capture sensitive, first-person historical narratives, ensuring high-fidelity preservation of witness accounts for future academic research.
Education
Ph.D. - Near Eastern Studies
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD2002
M.A. - Near Eastern Studies
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD1999
B.A. - History, Archaeology, Religion
University of Redlands
Redlands, CA1995
Secondary Credential For Science Instruction -
California Department of Education
1995
Skills
- MEDIA: Digital storytelling; film & tv production; scriptwriting; video editing; animation; graphic design; podcast production & audio engineering; media team management; IP policy; social media content & marketing; series development; network negotiations
- POLITICAL MEDIA: Political ads for tv and social media; demographic research; FEC compliance; government & public relations
- COMPUTER: Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Premiere, AfterEffects, Animate, Illustrator, Audition, etc), Microsoft Office, Wix, SquareSpace, Wordpress, Canvas, Blackboard, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, X (Twitter), YouTube, etc
- SCIENTIFIC: Laboratory management; museum archiving; artifact conservation; exhibit staging; large-scale project & personnel management
- EDITORIAL: Peer-review journal production as editor (Near Eastern Archaeology), advisory board member, and blind manuscript reviewer (NEA, Bulletin of the American Society of Overseas Research, Maarav, Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Archiv für Orientforschung, etc)
- EDUCATIONAL: Curriculum design and reform; grant writing; institutional accreditation (QEP); inquiry-based, experiential, and service learning; interdisciplinary STEM/Humanities integration
- ACADEMIC EXPERTISE: Published historian of government and political economy; origins of the state, trade, money, debt, banking; archaeology; Assyriology; ancient law; cultures, literatures, and languages of the ancient world; secondary training: Classics and Egyptology
- LANGUAGES: Spoken proficiency in Italian, Spanish, Hebrew (modern); Reading proficiency in French, German; Scholarly expertise in Akkadian (Assyro-Babylonian), Sumerian, Middle Egyptian, Old South Arabian, Hebrew (ancient), Aramaic, Ugaritic, Phoenician-Punic, Greek, Latin; Elementary proficiency in Arabic, Ethiopic, Coptic, Hittite, Hurrian, Sanskrit
Publications & Lectures
Complete list of publications and lectures available upon request. Some representative work includes:
- Resurrecting the Brother of Jesus: The James Ossuary Controversy and the Quest for Religious Relics. University of North Carolina Press (2009)
- “Self, Substance, and Social Metaphysics.” in The Adventure of the Human Intellect
- “The Aramaic Papyri Scripts.” Epigraphic Essays in Honor of Frank Moore Cross.
- Invited lectures at the Smithsonian, Getty Villa, Brown University, Hebrew Union College (Jerusalem), University of Southern California, Penn State, Chapman University, University of Texas at Austin, the Biblical Archaeology Society, and dozens of talks at professional conferences (American Schools of Oriental Research, American Oriental Society, Society of Biblical Literature, American Academy of Religion, etc.)
Timeline
Field Archaeologist
Israel Antiquities Authority
02.1994 - 12.1994
Creative Strategist & Executive Producer
Project Amnesia
2022 - Current
Director
COW PAC
2021 - 2024
TV Producer
Breitenbach Creative+Media
2012 - 2020
Consultant
Bright Futures College Counseling
2007 - 2019
Visiting Assistant Professor
University Of Texas at Austin
2010 - 2012
Assistant Professor (Tenure Track)
Rhodes College
2003 - 2008
Adjunct Professor of Ancient Studies
University of Maryland, Baltimore County, UMBC
2001 - 2003
Lecturer in Near Eastern Studies
The Johns Hopkins University
1999 - 2003
Science Teacher (9-12)
Gilbert High School, Anaheim UHSD
1995 - 1996
Videographer & Archivist
The 1939 Society & Chapman University
1990 - 1991
Ph.D. - Near Eastern Studies
The Johns Hopkins University
M.A. - Near Eastern Studies
The Johns Hopkins University
B.A. - History, Archaeology, Religion
University of Redlands
Secondary Credential For Science Instruction -
California Department of Education