Ryan Hornby

Ryan founded ‘IAM’, a model and creative agency group with over 70 personnel and offices in Belfast and Dublin. The company specialised in facilitating international careers for Irish models, photographers, stylists and hair/makeup artists, predominantly in the fashion capitals of London, Milan, Paris and New York.IAM worked with several global brands such as Chanel, Calvin Klein, Coach, Topshop, ASOS, Adidas, Puma and Vogue. The company was the first and only agency in the country to sign their talent with major agencies in over 20 countries, including with some of the largest entities in the industry such as IMG, Elite and NEXT. IAM was also the first and only agency in the country’s history to represent a Northern Irish model at a major fashion week.IAM negotiated a successful acquisition with a competitor agency. As part of this acquisition, all of IAM's valuable assets were purchased and as a result IAM ceased trading.Having bootstrapped IAM by utilising self taught brand, digital marketing and business development strategy, Ryan decided to solidify his tried and tested understanding by formally training in digital marketing analytics with MIT.Shortly after, Ryan served as an interim digital marketing consultant at Teneo, an international C-suite advisory firm with 18 offices and over 700 employees worldwide, working exclusively with the CEOs and senior executives of the world’s leading companies, including a significant number of Fortune 100 companies.Ryan has since been employed as Head of Business Development and Innovation at MXB, a multiple award-winning, full-service marketing agency. Ryan was responsible for suspecting, prospecting and converting new business at MXB and mobilised bespoke internal teams in order to support this process. Ryan had an in-depth understanding of the entirety of MXB’s extensive portfolio of clients, including Coca Cola, Twitter and P&G.Ryan provides strategic counsel across a key range of often complex and nuanced brand, digital marketing and business development objectives and issues for an extensive portfolio of international clientele across multiple industries and sectors. When necessary, Ryan mobilises his team of global specialists to support this process. Ryan’s clients range from prominent personal brands to multi-billion dollar entities.Ryan is also the founder of Advocado, a technology start-up based in Northern Ireland, and is a co-owner/partner of multiple other businesses.Ryan is also a regular keynote speaker and has been featured on TEDx and in Forbes and Yahoo.