Ryan Singh

Ryan will be his spending Fall 2013 semester at Watson University, a social venture incubator in Boulder, CO, and return to the University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign to graduate with a dual degree in Finance and Marketing in May 2014.

Ryan believes that business and organizational best practices can be applied to the social sector to increase its effectiveness.

Co-founder of the Illinois Chapter of Students Consulting for Nonprofits Organizations (SCNO), he has scaled and effectively led the organization in its mission of providing the community with pro-bono management and technology consulting services. The organization has grown significantly in its six semesters of existence – it is now 85 members strong and consults for 11 local, national, and international nonprofits per semester.

Inspired by the non-profits he worked with in SCNO, Ryan set out to launch a social venture of his own: DREAM Studio. Himself a freestyle rapper, he created DREAM Studio to provide high school students with a space to discuss, create, and record music and ultimately gain confidence and self-awareness. Partnering with the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center and the UIUC School of Social Work, the program connects high school students with college mentors in a fun and creative environment.

Ryan also spent the last two summers in a technology consulting internship learning how to enable organizations to make information-driven decisions through analytics.

Looking forward, Ryan hopes to combine his business and social sector experiences to scale socially-valuable projects and enterprises.