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Work with the person building the system.
Chief Learning Officer · Adult Development PractitionerThe developmental problem
At Transformative Learning Solutions, I have built a development-first learning architecture around a problem most professional development overlooks: capable adults often know what effective leadership requires, yet lose reliable access to that judgment when credibility, control, belonging, competence, safety, or identity feels threatened.
The architecture
As Chief Learning Officer, I translate decades of adult-developmental psychology, Immunity to Change scholarship, learning science, organizational risk, and lived experience under pressure into practical systems that make this hidden conflict visible and workable. Our independently developed Pressure Map™ identifies the capacity a role now demands, the observable behaviors working against it, the legitimate psychological good those behaviors are protecting, and the assumptions that make the pattern feel necessary. From there, TLS designs bounded real-work experiments, decision rehearsals, facilitated vILT, digital courses, coaching, manager tools, compliance systems, bench-development experiences, and operating artifacts that allow people to test those assumptions safely and gather new evidence.
The transfer
The result is development tied directly to consequential work: stronger judgment, clearer boundaries, more distributed ownership, more productive conflict, greater self-authorship, and leadership capacity that remains available when conditions become uncertain or politically charged. My role is to connect scholarship, strategy, instructional design, facilitation, and measurement into one coherent system—so organizations can see what pressure is protecting, build the larger capacity the work demands, and evaluate whether that growth actually transfers into performance.
Credibility
Education, institutional risk, and pressure-tested leadership.
Ryan’s work sits at the intersection of adult development, leadership, rhetoric, institutional execution, and lived pressure. The result is a practical learning architecture grounded in how adults actually grow, decide, protect themselves, and act inside complex systems.
Adult development and leadership learning.
Doctoral work in Educational Leadership at Saint Mary’s College of California, with a focus on adult development, learning, leadership, and durable growth under pressure.
Leadership, rhetoric, and meaning-making.
M.A. in Leadership Studies from Saint Mary’s College of California and B.A. in Rhetorical Theory from UC Berkeley, grounding the work in leadership, interpretation, language, and the way meaning shapes action.
Institutional risk and execution.
Former Vice President in Global Risk and Protective Services at Bank of America, with experience inside a large institutional environment where risk, leadership, protection, and execution under pressure were central.
Judgment under real stakes.
United States Marine Corps service from 2000 to 2007, including high-pressure environments that demanded discipline, adaptability, accountability, and clear judgment.
