Ryan Smolar

Ryan Smolar

For the last 6 years, Ryan has led the Downtown Santa Ana (DTSA) improvement district in Orange County, California.  In his leadership role, Ryan directs the Downtown BID’s event programming, public-private partnerships, economic development, strategy, management, organizational development and community relations.

Ryan has created and managed scores of community events, programs, marketing campaigns and technology initiatives including Savor Santa Ana, the historic Santa Ana Street Breakfast, Santa Ana Media Summit, Hack for Health, the Calliotree, Downtown annual gatherings, mixers and business lunches and production oversight of DTSA’s monthly Artwalk event.

Ryan is proud to continue to grow through his involvement with the International Downtown Association as an Emerging Leader Fellow, . Prior to this honor, Ryan won an IDA Merit Award for Marketing & Communication, Vice Chaired IDA Top Research Councils that wrote reports on great urban parks and municipal partnerships, participated in writing an IDA report on the night time economy, received an IDA Springboard for the Arts grant, and he attended and spoke at IDA regional and national conferences.

Ryan is also the initiator of PlacemakingUS, a network of US-based Placemakers working with placemaking networks across the globe. He is excited to collaborate with other place managers to diffuse knowledge, expertise and opportunities especially in the fields of local food/health/nature, arts/culture, history, social infrastructure/soft development, micro-enterprise/social entrepreneurship and community engagement, crowdsourcing and resilience.