Editor’s Note: Welcome to “Reel Women,” our annual tribute to dynamic women in creative industries. For the month of March, let us introduce you to some very special women like Ascend Communication co-founder and entrepreneur, Terry Ryan
Terry Ryan’s remarkable journey is a testament to her entrepreneurial spirit, philanthropic endeavors, and passion for the arts and sciences. Co-founding Ascend Communication with her husband Rob Ryan in 1989, Terry played a pivotal role in the company’s meteoric rise to success.
Ascend Communication’s groundbreaking internet equipment garnered over 90% of the market share, leading to a historic high-tech exit in 1999 when the company was sold for $24 billion, setting a record for venture-backed companies that endured for over two decades.
Following this monumental success, Terry and Rob shifted their focus towards inspiring and empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs. In 2015, they produced the innovative 3D interactive film “License to Dream,” aimed at high school students. This film serves as a guide for young minds, encouraging them to explore the world of entrepreneurship and providing practical step-by-step instructions for starting their own businesses.
Part of the acclaimed Life Changing Experiences Series, License to Dream has been widely embraced, airing in high schools across 18 states and three countries. Terry’s commitment to nurturing entrepreneurship extends beyond filmmaking. As the founder and president of Entrepreneur America Mentors, LLC, she has played a pivotal role in mentoring numerous startups, with several achieving billion-dollar exits under her guidance.In addition to her entrepreneurial pursuits, Terry’s passion for music and the arts shines through. She spent fifteen years singing alto in the Montana A ‘Cappella Society, performing across the United States and Europe.
Remarkably, Terry embarked on a new musical journey in her seventieth year, learning to play the viola and joining the Chamber Orchestra of Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. Terry and Rob’s dedication to scientific advancement is evident in their longstanding involvement with the Keck Observatory Advisory Council. For two decades, they have supported the Keck Lecture Series and the online astronomy platform Keck Nation, showcasing their commitment to advancing scientific knowledge and education.
Furthermore, Terry’s contributions to academia are exemplified by her election to the board of directors of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in 2019. Serving on the Communications Committee, Terry continues to leverage her expertise and leadership to further the institution’s mission of promoting public policy research and scholarship.
Terry and Rob’s story is featured in the new film The Man Who Saved The Internet With A Sunflower.
What’s your origin story?
My dad was a bombardier in WWII. That entitled him to go to college on the GI Bill. He got degrees in engineering and was a professor at Cornell University for 45 years. After age four, I grew up upstate in Ithaca, New York, one of five siblings.
My parents were very involved in civil rights. They were friends of Roy Wilkins and established the NAACP in Ithaca. When Mr. Wilkins planned a march on Washington, he put out a call for a large attendance. My mother rose to the occasion by hiring three buses and herding half of Ithaca to Washington.
Thus I was present at age 16 when Martin Luther King gave his Dream Speech. I graduated from Cornell in 1969. I met my husband there and we got married after we both graduated. I put him through graduate school in math and the brand-new field of computer science and he then put me through law school.
How did you get into Telecommunications?
My husband was already in this industry as a software engineer. I worked for a giant law firm in San Francisco. I soon figured out I really hated litigation. However, I proved very good at negotiation. My husband encouraged me to find a job in-house at a Silicon Valley company that specialized in his field of telecommunications. I think I got the job against stiff competition because I already understood all the jargon they threw at me during the interview – it was just the same as our dinner talk.
Who were your mentors?
I had a great boss at the Silicon Valley company. My other mentor was my husband – though he is the same age as me. He taught me how to study, he even made-up flash cards to help me prepare for the LSAT exam. He taught me to be more focused, more organized, to try harder.
Thanks to him, I surprised myself several times. For example, I scored in the 99th percentile on the LSAT exam, when I had only scored in the 85th percentile in the undergraduate SAT exam. I graduated Magna Cum Laude from law school with his constant encouragement. I had not graduated from Cornell with honors. Rob’s systems work.
While there will be others, what do you consider your biggest achievement to date?
My most surprising achievement was to sing for 15 years with an A’ Cappella Choir that was juried into the oldest and most prestigious of the international choral festivals in Cork, Ireland.
I came to enjoy music so much from that experience, that in my 70th year I accepted a dare from one of the world’s top neuroscientists and took up playing the viola. I’m not very good – yet—but I’m sure having fun learning classical music.
What drives you to create?
The only thing I do that I would rate as creative is making or designing my own jewelry. I do it because it is a lot of fun.
Award you crave, but haven’t won.
I am not seeking any awards. However, I think my husband should get the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He was 1/3 of the reason the internet survived. The first hurdle was getting Congress to approve allowing the DARPA net technology to become public (Al Gore championed that – it passed by one vote.)
The next was figuring out the protocols that allowed hundreds of millions to communicate one on one with each other (That was the URL system; WWW invented by Sir Timothy Berners-Lee.) Lastly, the internet almost failed because the only equipment available was expensive individual modems for each incoming call the internet service providers received.
The price for internet service was set by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission). The low price set did not allow the ISOs to make a profit. All the providers were going bankrupt. A simultaneous problem was no one’s equipment would talk to anyone else’s equipment. The providers were baffled and going under. The equipment Rob and the engineers at Ascend invented could take 96 calls, thus bringing the cost down almost 100 times.
Rob and his engineers also invented protocols that allowed any piece of equipment to talk to any other piece. The Ascend equipment was released in 1994. By 1999 access to the internet went from near zero to 55% in America. (See chart: Figure 56 in Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone.) Rob also had the foresight to meet all the international standards necessary to deploy the internet overseas, making it a global market.
Sir Timothy was deservedly awarded the honor of a baronetcy from the Queen of England for his accomplishment in establishing URLs. Rob likewise enabled the early internet to survive, so I think he too deserves a high honor. These inventions added together have put the world’s knowledge at everyone’s fingertips. That is surely worthy of an award.
Female-directed franchise films such as Star Wars or MCU constantly get called “woke” by Internet trolls. Why?
I am on the board of the Hoover Institution, a non-partisan conservative think tank at Stanford University. I do not think Star Wars is Woke. I love Star Wars. It portrays good vs. evil – pure and simple. What’s woke about that?
Coffee, Lunch or Happy Hour.
Condoleezza Rice, 66th Secretary of State, is currently Executive Director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Lucky me, I get to do exactly that several times a year.
It’s an election year, what is keeping you up at night?
Since I realized I can’t have any real impact on the election, I have compartmentalized the whole thing. I am dealing with it by not thinking about it.
Favorite TV Show.
Anything but Yellowstone. It is filmed in the valley where I live and it gives city folks a complete misperception of Montana. It is the last place where you will hear constant use of the F-word. We are peaceful, law abiding and get along well with our neighbors. We all pull together and take care of each other in an emergency, like during our massive forest fires.
We certainly do not murder our rivals and throw their dead bodies into the mountain canyons our properties are backed up against. We don’t scream at people fishing in the river that runs through our property and indeed the entire county. Everyone is allowed by law to fish with a license.
We Montanans pride ourselves on being nice to each other. Everyone knows everyone. People here are not malicious. Kindness is contagious.
Band or singer you would ditch you career and go perform with.
Bands are not my thing, but I have fantasized about going back in time and be good enough to play viola in the orchestras directed by Bach, Handel or Vivaldi. Heck, I’d settle for any of the Baroque composers or for Beethoven or Mozart. Of course, the orchestras were all male back then.
What’s your theme song for 2024?
Theme songs: When we were first married it was The Impossible Dream from Man Of La Mancha which opened on Broadway while we were in college. After founding Ascend there was so much business travel our song became Jon Denver’s Leaving on a Jet Plane.
These days as we are getting older it is Jim Croce’s Time in a Bottle. Rob and I have been lucky enough to have a long and successful marriage. Last verse: “If I could save time in a bottle, if words could make wishes come true.
I would save every day like a treasure and then, again, I would spend them with you. But there never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them. (musical interlude) I’ve been around enough to know, you’re the one I want to go through time with.”
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