20 Under 40 - 1998 Profile: Julie Ann Ryan

PRESSTIME

By Presstime Magazine

First Published: December 1998

This computer pro started her own business, developed a new product and studied for six months to earn a certified project manager certificate from the Project Management Institute in Upper Darby, Pa.
Such accomplishments aside, what Vice President of Operations Kevin Desmond now treasures most about Julie Ann Ryan, technology director of The Wichita Eagle, is how she manages her duties as coordinator of Year 2000 upgrades for pre-press ad-management, ad-billing, circulation, classified, editorial and payroll systems. Ryan and her staff of 14 coordinate interdepartmental teams in charge of each upgrade.
Ryan joined the Eagle in 1996 for her first venture in newspapering after a career at hardware and software companies. "There's so much information a newspaper holds," she says. "I see a lot of shifts ahead to utilize the technology to produce the paper, manage all of the information and save it for other activities including database marketing."
She started a small consulting company in 1992 and helped clients set up and initiate database marketing. She also helped create PREdge media-contact management software that organizes and manages public-relations activities. But when her partners wanted to move the company in another direction, she signed on as a workstation-product manager, then applied at the Eagle. Friends told her it might be a challenge.
Indeed. Recent innovations include consolidating bills for classified ads by one party that run within the same billing period, launching an employee intranet, and, of course, Y2K.
"At the Eagle, I have the opportunity to be entrepreneurial as well as be a manager," she says. "You have to constantly think that way, sometimes almost too much—we can chase too many things. But that certainly makes it interesting!"

Education: 1981, B.S., computer science, Kansas State University, Manhattan.
Career: 1981-91, software engineer, programmer, analyst, information-systems manager and product-marketing manager for two divisions of NCR, Wichita; 1991-92, director of product development, Brite Voice Systems, Wichita; 1992-94, co-owner and co-founder, RYTAN Database Marketing, Wichita; 1994-96, workstation product manager, Koch Industries Inc., Wichita; 1996-present, technology director, The Wichita Eagle.
Personal: Age, 38. Born, Goodland, Kan. Married, husband Phillip, three daughters.
Diversions: Coaching girls' basketball and volleyball, singing in a choir, hiking and bicycling.
Connections: The Wichita Eagle, 825 E. Douglas, Wichita, Kan. 67202. E-mail, jryan@wichitaeagle.com; phone, (316) 268-6337; fax, (316) 268-6621.