Ryan Thompson

Founder & CEO • Blog • Twitter • LinkedIn

The story of Ryan's near-tragedy at the lake is not the whole Ariamedia story, but it was the beginning. By all accounts the submerged object he hit should have paralyzed him.

At twenty five, he was director of marketing at a $90 million high tech firm, married, comfortable — but yearning. The world was his proverbial oyster. Then he dove into murky, lake waters at the company picnic and his reality turned into a nightmare-punctuated blur of water-helicopter-operating room-blackness.

His neck, broken, he would spend months stuck in a hospital bed.

And it came to him there between sterile sheets... If he could survive a broken neck he could leave the big salary, ditch certainty, and step out on his own. He took is second plunge that same year : June, 2000.

He hasn't looked back since. And neither has Ariamedia. That experience changed Ryan — and Ariamedia's clients know the benefit.