Executive Director, AHCJ

As a former member of AHCJ — who has seen firsthand the value of its training programs — Kelsey Ryan joined as Executive Director in September 2022. She leads the 1,500+ member international association and its supporting nonprofit, the Center for Excellence in Health Care Journalism, in advancing public understanding of health care issues and improving the quality, accuracy and visibility of health care reporting. Previously, Ryan was founder and publisher of The Beacon, a nonprofit news network with newsrooms in Kansas City and Wichita. Before that, Ryan worked at The Kansas City Star as a data and investigative reporter, and was on the investigative team that was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service for its series on government secrecy in Kansas. She began her journalism career at The Joplin (Mo.) Globe a day after an EF-5 tornado destroyed one-third of the city, and later worked at The Wichita (Kan.) Eagle, covering health care and later city government and investigations. Outside of daily journalism, she’s worked in nonprofit management at Local Independent Online News (LION) Publishers, a journalism trade association supporting news entrepreneurs to help them grow more sustainable businesses. Ryan was a 2022 Google News Initiative Fellow in Poynter’s Media Transformation Challenge executive fellowship program and was selected in 2022 for Editor & Publisher’s “25 under 35” list of news publishing leaders.