Ryan Hays

Ryan Hays serves as Executive Vice President and the Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer at the University of Cincinnati. He leads the Office of Innovation, including the 1819 Innovation Hub and the Cincinnati Innovation District. He also oversees the Department of Marketing and Communications and serves as Senior Adviser to the President and the Board of Trustees.

From 2012 to 2022, Hays served as the President’s Chief of Staff, overseeing the Office of the President and the Office of the Board of Trustees. Hays was the primary architect for the University’s strategic direction Next Lives Here, in addition to the past strategic plan Creating Our Third Century. In 2019, he served as Interim Director of Athletics. In 2020, he co-led the University’s enterprise-wide response to the pandemic.

Hays served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the University of Cincinnati Research Institute (UCRI), the precursor to the Office of Innovation, from 2014 to 2022. In 2016, he secured a $40 million investment to create the 1819 Innovation Hub. In 2017, he hired the University’s first Chief Innovation Officer. In 2020, he helped attract a $100 million investment from JobsOhio to establish the Cincinnati Innovation District.

Prior to UC, Hays was Assistant Dean of the Faculty at Princeton University. At Princeton, his duties spanned all four academic divisions of the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. He co-managed a $600 million faculty budget and facilitated the appointment of 500 lecturers and visiting professors annually.

Prior to Princeton, Hays staffed the Board of Trustees at Emory University. At Emory, Hays taught in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts (ILA), the oldest interdisciplinary doctoral program in the country. Hays also worked at Dartmouth College. In 1997, he helped launch the Presidents’ Summit for America’s Future under the direction of Retired General Colin Powell.

Hays serves on the boards of Cincinnati Regional Business Committee, 3CDC, REDI Cincinnati, Cincinnati Regional Chamber, Cintrifuse and Cincy Tech. 

Hays received a BA from DePauw University and a PhD in psychoanalytic studies and postmodern theory from Emory University. His dissertation on Sigmund Freud ranked among the Top 25 most-accessed scholarly works on ProQuest, an electronic library of more than 2.1 million dissertations and theses. His book Strategists First: How to Defeat the Strategy Trap has been called a “burn-the-boats movement” for leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs.