Ryan has worked with more than thirty-five competitive programs at the middle school, high school, collegiate and independent levels in California, Colorado and Hawaii. He regularly designs, consults and provides clinics for marching bands, indoor percussion ensembles and winter guards throughout the year.
Ryan feels fortunate to have been on the same staffs as, and continues to learn from, some of the brightest educators/designers/judges in DCI, WGI & BOA. Lee has multiple ties with the Sacramento Mandarins organization, as a visual instructor for the drum corps since 2021, visual designer for their indoor winds group and program director for the Mandarins Music Academy – which serves over forty Northern California elementary schools, and one thousand students, with instrumental music classes. In the judging world, Ryan has served as a Chief Judge, Lead Visual Caption Judge & has been on several circuit, regional & state championship event panels across the country. He is an adjudicator for Bands of America, Western Band Association, US Bands and many more circuits in the fall. During the indoor season, he judges Design Analysis/General Effect (Guard), Visual/Effect Visual (Percussion) and Visual Analysis (Winds).
As an in-demand marching arts instructor, his groups have earned consistent high visual performance awards, state titles and have been BOA Regional Finalists & Class Champions. Other affiliations include being a former guest on the Marching Roundtable Podcast, featured in Halftime Magazine and a member of the Winter Leadership Committee for the Northern California Band Association. He also helped co-teach the Marching Band Methods course at California State University, Sacramento, teaching music education majors the fundamentals of visual design, and how to use Pyware. He enjoys attending hip-hop/contemporary dance workshops, and currently lives in Sacramento, CA with his wife Kourtney & Chihuahua, Stuart.