Ryan Donovan LGBTQ College Scholarship
The PRSA Silicon Valley Chapter has established the Ryan Donovan LGBTQ Scholarship to be awarded annually to an LGBTQ communications student attending an SF/Bay Area school.
LGBTQ students face a variety of obstacles, financial ones included. They may have less support from their families and more demands on their expenses. Earning a scholarship can help mitigate some of these obstacles.
To be awarded in 2020.
About Ryan Donovan
Ryan, whose public relations career spanned three decades across agency and prominent in-house roles, passed away in early 2019. He was a PRSA Silicon Valley Board member for more than a decade. Ryan was a committed mentor, distinguished business leader and loyal friend.
Ryan was known for his work at many of the Bay Area’s strongest brands — and for developing an expansive network of colleagues within the local and national PR scene. He helped build Text100’s San Francisco office and Ketchum’s technology practice in the late 90s through 2003, at which point he joined Hewlett Packard Company for a five-year stint that included handling some of the company’s most sensitive corporate and board issues.
After Hewlett Packard Co., Donovan joined SanDisk to lead its corporate marketing. He stayed in that role for more than two years before joining Visa as SVP of communications. Over nearly three years at Visa, Donovan worked on many initiatives including its credit, debit and prepaid products, as well as Visa’s multimillion-dollar sponsorships with the Olympics, NFL and FIFA, among other areas.
This summary is just a sampling of Ryan’s storied and successful career contributions. He was admired as a professional and most of all as a friend. We miss Ryan dearly and know helping young people excel in their careers and making a difference was so very important to him – and exactly what this scholarship is all about.
