An executive vice president with Edelman’s Corporate Advisory Services practice, Ryan Cudney serves as a strategic counselor to senior decision makers engaged in transformation, including portfolio realignment and expansion, turnarounds and recoveries, and business repositioning.

As the group head of Business Transformation at Edelman Chicago, Ryan helps his clients create human-centric transformation experiences through a better understanding of audience segments, vision and narrative development, communications organization design, and campaign execution rooted in research and outcome measurement.

Ryan has also helped companies regain market leadership following a material breach of trust, including international product recalls, viral customer service incidents, regulatory enforcement actions, cybersecurity breaches, high-profile litigation, and discrimination. To emerge stronger from a crisis, Ryan has counseled clients on catalytic actions to address root cause, including differentiated processes and procedures, customer care improvements, leadership and board governance enhancements, and values alignment.

Prior to joining Edelman, Ryan was a US political staffer; most recently, serving as the Executive Director of the Illinois Republican State Senate Campaign Committee (RSSCC). As Executive Director, Ryan worked on a range of issues at the intersection of political strategy, communications and public policy.

Prior to joining the RSSCC, Ryan served as a Senior Consultant for a boutique Chicago-based public affairs firm, where he developed and implemented communications and grassroots engagement campaigns for political action committees, candidates and corporate clients. Ryan directed an issue advocacy campaign for an Illinois retail association and executed a successful communications plan for a global retailer that assisted its expansion into the Chicago marketplace.