In this Alumni Spotlight Q&A, Kelly Ryan reflects on her journey from UCSB to co-founder and COO of Raise Consulting. She shares how her UCSB experience was shaped by a strong sense of community, her sorority and transformative summers at the Family Vacation Center. Kelly offers insights on building meaningful relationships and the fulfillment she finds in helping individuals and organizations thrive. Her story highlights the lasting influence of her UCSB connections and her commitment to driving growth and innovation in the construction and real estate industries.
What drew you to UC Santa Barbara for your undergraduate years?
Once I visited the campus, I fell in love! It’s obviously a beautiful campus, in a beautiful location, with great weather. I think why I ultimately chose UC Santa Barbara was because of how happy everyone seemed when I did visit and toured. Everyone was very friendly and seemed very well-rounded, which is what I was looking for. It seemed like a great place to be and study, with great people to surround myself with, on top of a solid UC education. And all of those things turned out to be very true! I feel like all the people I met at UCSB were happy, well-rounded, cared about their studies and school and just wanted to enjoy themselves during college.
Upon earning your degree in Communications in 2016, were you already envisioning a future career in the consulting industry?
I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with that degree, but I was very confident that it was the right major for me and that I would be able to find a career path where I could put it to use. I was definitely very passionate about Communication and Communication Studies going into college, but I knew there was a lot for me to learn about what I could do with that in the working world. But, I felt like that was the best fit.
You joined the Kappa Alpha Theta Sorority your first year—what led you to join and what was your experience like in the sorority?
Oh my goodness, I am so grateful for my time in Theta! I was the first person in my family to do Greek Life, so it was a very new experience for me. I was a very involved student in high school, in leadership and on the cheerleading team, so I knew I wanted to be a part of an organization or join some sort of group. I obviously heard about sororities and sorority life, and I had made some really good girl friends in high school. I was kind of looking for a group of girl friends that I could get really close with in college. So, I went through the recruitment process and Theta, to me, was just a group of girls that I felt like you could be yourself around. I feel like I saw a lot of different types of personalities and different types of interests in the sorority. The recruitment process goes by very fast, though, so it was like in the blink of an eye I felt like I was having to make a decision.
I think a lot of times when I look back I was just fortunate that I ended up being a really good fit for Theta, but I don’t know if I knew 100% that it was the right decision when I was first joining it. But luckily, it all worked out, and a lot of my closest girl friends now, even after my time at UCSB, are my Theta sorority sisters! They’ve been a part of my life ever since then, and I’m so grateful for that. I feel like as we continued to recruit throughout the four years, our sorority was kind of known as the more down-to-earth, more diverse (in terms of personalities and interests), type of sorority which I really liked. I got to meet a lot of different types of people with different interests and things like that, which was good.
In what ways do you continue to stay connected to UCSB as an alum?
The most prominent way I stay connected is through the Alumni Association and by going back, now for two years in a row, to the Greek Interconnect event that they host. They just hosted the second one that I’ve been to, and so that’s been a great way to even just get on campus, meet with students and meet with other alumni that were a part of Greek Life. That’s been big for me. And then, just staying in touch with some of my friends who went to UCSB. I also met my now husband at UCSB, so a lot of our friends either started dating at UCSB or met at UCSB and are now getting married. Santa Barbara is a popular destination for their weddings for that reason, so we’re able to go back to Santa Barbara and stop by campus, which is always very nostalgic and holds a lot of positive memories for us. But I think the biggest way I stay connected is the Greek Interconnect events and the Alumni Association. Now my current company, Raise Consulting, we hired an intern that is a current student at UCSB so we stay in touch that way. She works remotely for us and she’ll work on campus so I get to check in on everything that’s going on on campus through her, which is fun.
Tell me about your experience working at the Family Vacation Center during your summers at UCSB. How did that experience add to your connection with the UCSB community?
So many of my fondest memories were from working at the Family Vacation Center. That’s also where I was able to meet a lot of people who, to this day, are some of our closest friends from when we worked together on the staff at the Family Vacation Center. So I was first introduced to the FVC through Tim, my husband now. He worked there the first summer after freshman year. I think he had found out about it through some of his fraternity brothers who had worked there during the summer, and he obviously interviewed with them and got the position and was on the aquatics team his first summer. I was staying in Isla Vista because I was doing summer sessions and summer school there while he was working, so I would often visit the staff and the FVC and see the operation as a bit of an outsider. I thought it was such a cool program that the school and the Alumni Association offered. It seemed like a lot of the families really loved it and would come back year after year.
So then the following summer, the summer after my sophomore year, I also interviewed and was hired onto the staff. That was my first year doing it, and then I continued to do it for a few summers after that, and kind of worked my way up to the Assistant Director position the summer after I graduated. So it started out as a fun summer job and then ended up being really good work experience for me. The Alumni Association was great to work for, and I feel like I developed a lot of career skills working at that camp because it was a full time job. I think we worked 40-50 hour weeks, and we lived on campus with the staff and the families as well, so it was a really immersive working experience.
I definitely think through that I thought about going into hospitality after college and kind of looked into that. Also, a lot of the families end up hiring the staff full time when they graduate, so it’s a great way to network with the parents that are the vacationers when you’re there. A lot of people get job opportunities from it! So it’s a great program all around–obviously for the families that are visiting there, but also for the students and the staff to get great work experience on campus and be able to network with the families that are there and visiting. So it was all around a really, really cool opportunity, and it was nice to be able to return each summer too and continue to develop relationships with the families that were coming back year after year.
During your time at UCSB, what was your favorite study spot?
I actually studied in Theta a lot. So, I did study in our sorority house a lot, but other than that, the library for sure. I feel like especially when it came down to crunch time, either for midterms or finals, I was in the library. It was great obviously that it’s open 24/7, so for those late nights it’s really good. And if you can find a good, quiet spot, you can really post up there and stay for a while. So when I knew that I needed to study for hours on end and really stay focused, the library was always a good spot for me.
What led you from UCSB into the consulting world?
Right when I graduated, I started out at a coworking space in member services, and that’s when I was exposed to a lot of startups and entrepreneurs, some of which were in consulting or the recruitment business. So that was when I first got my exposure to it because, prior to that, I didn’t really know what consulting necessarily was. So I was able to connect myself with some professionals in that field, interviewed with a few companies and joined a recruitment consulting firm. There, I got a good foundation of experience and the skillset and how to do the job. I did that for a few years until I co-founded Raise Consulting with a few of my former colleagues.
So we started Raise Consulting to consult to construction companies and real estate development companies in Southern California, and have been able to grow the business for the last two and a half years. It’s been really great and very rewarding! Consulting is all about problem solving–listening and identifying the needs of our clients and seeing what they’re really looking for and helping solve problems for them. So it’s a very fulfilling job to be able to do that for organizations, and also for individuals looking to level up in their careers or make a transition to something new that’s going to be a better opportunity for them and for their families.
Raise Consulting focuses on recruitment within commercial real estate and construction. What inspired you to focus on this niche?
It kind of happened by chance a little bit. I mean, prior to recruitment consulting, I was in commercial real estate, so it did make some sense to transition to that market sector. And then once I was actually in it, and was able to speak to the construction companies and the individuals running these companies (I also work with a lot of project managers, superintendents, out in the field actually doing the construction itself), there’s a lot of passion and purpose and meaning behind their work and they really love what they do.
It’s definitely not an easy job by any means; it can be very physically demanding, labor-intensive, long hours. But they love doing it because they love the work that they do, they love the tangible product of what they’re actually building. There’s a lot of pride in what they’re building. I love people, I love getting to know people, the “why” behind what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. I think in the construction industry, they’re very quick to tell you how much pride they have in the product they’re building. Whether that be a school, which is obviously giving back to our youth and the children in the community, whether that be a hospital, or civic centers, museums, even industrial warehouses, whatever they’re building it’s serving a purpose to give back. Whether that’s building the economy up or actually to the people that it’s going to be helping and serving.
I fell in love with that part of recruiting for the construction industry. They’re also very relationship-driven as well, which is really fun. That aligns with what I like to look for in who I partner with too: people who are looking for lasting partnerships and relationships. That’s definitely what has kept me around in this industry.