Ryan Allis is a technology entrepreneur and social entrepreneur from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Ryan has been an entrepreneur since he started Allis Computing at age 11 in 1995. Today, Ryan is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of iContact, the leading global provider of email marketing services to small and mid-sized businesses. iContact is a socially responsible high-growth venture backed technology company headquartered in North Carolina, USA. iContact utilizes the 4-1s Corporate Social Responsibility Model in which they give 1% of payroll, 1% of employee time to community volunteering, 1% of equity, and 1% of product (to non-profit organizations in North Carolina) as part of its social mission.Ryan has built North Carolina-based iContact from its start in July 2003 to its current size with over 240 employees, 67,000 customers, and $50 million in annual sales. iContact has raised $53.3M in investment from NC IDEA, Updata Partners, North Atlantic Capital and JMI Equity. iContact most recently secured a $40 million dollars Series B round of venture capital funding from JMI Equity in August 2010.iContact has made the INC 500 list three times from 2008-2010. In 2008, iContact was named the fastest growing software company in North Carolina by INC Magazine and in 2009 the Software Company of the Year by the North Carolina Technology Association. In 2008 Ryan was named as Ernst null; Youngnull;s Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the Carolinas with his partner and iContact co-founder Aaron Houghton.Ryan is the founder of the Humanity Fund which invests in socially responsible high-growth businesses in the USA, Africa, and Latin America. So far the Humanity Fund portfolio includes investments in VillageEnergy, EvoApp, Unblab, and SchoolHouse. Ryan is the Chairman of Virante, Inc., a web marketing consulting firm based in Durham, NC and an early-stage investor in EvoApp, Unblab, Pollynull;s, and SchoolHouse. Ryan is the author of the book Zero to One Million, published by McGraw-Hill in February 2008, which reached the Wall Street Journal Bestseller list. Ryan is currently the Board Chairman for Nourish International, a non-profit organization based in Chapel Hill, which has chapters at 25 colleges across the United States. Nourish teaches entrepreneurial skills to college students and uses the net profits from student ventures to invest in social entrepreneurs and community-based organizations in the developing world focused on sustainable development and eliminating extreme poverty and hunger in our lifetime. In 2009, Ryan received recognition as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Americans by the U.S. Junior Chamber.Ryan attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was an economics major and a Blanchard Scholar. Ryan is currently enrolled in the EO/MIT Entrepreneurial Masters Program (EMP).
