Ryan Schafer

Few consultants pair Ryan’s cross-industry breadth with his depth of delivery experience, a combination that lets him identify nuanced enterprise-wide improvement opportunities and then implement them, rather than only providing recommendations. He engages leaders as a peer, fully integrating into client organizations — staff and vendors often do not realize he is an external resource. In his 10 years supporting Ankura’s clients, Ryan also contributed to the firm’s healthcare practice and to the development of its AI capabilities. Prior to Ankura, he held executive leadership positions in shared services, program delivery, technology, and operations, including as assistant vice president of global business services at Aramark, where he stood up a multi-functional global shared services organization spanning more than 4,000 field locations; as senior program manager and interim chief information officer for Meritain Health, a division of Aetna, during an acquisition transition; and as senior director of shared delivery services for LTCG, the nation’s largest third-party administrator of long-term care insurance.

Representative Experience

Turnaround and Transformation, Catalyst Recycling and Environmental Services: Led the restart of a plant emerging from bankruptcy, developing program plans to repair and restart operations, resolve environmental issues, and establish organizational measures and controls that gave new owners confidence and enabled the recruiting of new executive leadership. Began as program leader, filled a vacant chief operating officer and general manager role on an interim basis until leaders were hired, and then served as chief of staff to the incoming CEO. Work is ongoing; secured funding and construction management partners and began modernizing the plant and its systems.

Technology Assessment, Multi-Company Holding Group (Facilities, Apparel, and Food Services): Conducted an IT systems and leadership assessment for a group spanning five organizations, evaluating candidates for a future chief information officer role and building a prioritized roadmap of technology and process changes to support the group’s growth plans and a substantial new capital investment. Pioneered the use of AI tools to compile and analyze input from more than two dozen interviews, completing with two consultants an effort that would typically require four or five.

Strategic Planning, Regional Healthcare (Two Hospitals and 80 Clinics): Led a process and systems analysis for the chief financial officer and developed a roadmap to improve revenue capture, control costs, and manage vendors more strategically and cost-effectively. Delivered a proposal and implementation roadmap to create a vendor management practice, validating the organization’s readiness to grow and better support its community through new digital and technology programs.

Strategic Planning, Retail Manufacturing, Ecommerce, and Healthcare Payer Support: Facilitated more than 20 future-state design sessions for a manufacturing client, identifying 70 improvement opportunities and documenting 20 future-state processes and policies; led requirements analysis to replatform a $500 million e-commerce company; and developed process recommendations that improved the reliability of high-volume printing operations, integrating data from 60 stakeholders and four core systems.

Organizational Redesign and Execution, Energy, Manufacturing, Insurance, Professional Services, and Healthcare: Assessed and restructured workforces, in some cases exceeding 10,000 staff, to align with leadership’s growth and cost-containment objectives, including skills assessments, leveling, implementation roadmaps, and execution. Created delivery management and service integration offices to better align internal and vendor-owned work groups.

Global Shared Services, Mass Media, Food and Facilities Management, and Healthcare: Led the implementation, strategic planning, program management, and operations enhancement of multi-functional global shared services organizations spanning finance, human resources, information technology, supply chain, customer administration, legal, and facilities management.

Integration and Transformation, Manufacturing and Healthcare: Led data and organizational integration for multiple joint ventures, including a B2B distribution venture between two global tire manufacturers with more than 70 U.S. locations, covering the deployment of over 150 system interfaces, and the integration of two healthcare claims processing organizations across seven workstreams and locations. Directed the integration of a major insurance carrier’s long-term care practice, transitioning more than 200 staff across three locations and 11 IT systems into a growing startup over an 18-month, $4 million effort.

Process Improvement, Aviation Services: Led the effort to modernize a services company’s payment processing across more than 200 airport facilities, analyzing the full payment value chain and leading design workshops to create tailored enterprise dashboards for revenue management, human resources, and recruiting.

Publications and Speaking Engagements

Author, “Using Managed Services to Unlock Value for Businesses,” a three-part series on LinkedIn

Speaker, H2B2, a community supporting the second-in-command role