Ryan Shook

Chief Technology Officer at Academica

Miami, Florida, United States

About Ryan Shook

Ryan Shook is Chief Technology Officer at Academica. Location: Miami, Florida, United States.

Two decades in charter school operations — scaling networks, building back-office systems, driving enrollment, and sitting at the intersection of every function that makes a school work. That operator's view of the business is what now shapes my approach as Chief Technology Officer. I've spent my career in Operations, Data Analysis, Student and Parent Marketing, Strategic Planning, Business Development, and Management — which means the platforms I build aren't designed in a vacuum. They're designed by someone who has done the job, sat in the seat, and felt the friction firsthand. One of the defining chapters of that work was leading the implementation of a modern ERP and accounting system across 200+ entities processing more than $1B in annual payables — a multi-year overhaul that replaced a fragmented legacy stack with a unified financial backbone and gave leadership real-time visibility into the business. That project taught me what enterprise-grade implementation actually takes: deep cross-departmental alignment, relentless attention to data integrity, and the discipline to ship. Over the last several years, I expanded that work into Applications Development and have been leading the organization's shift to AI-native infrastructure: proprietary platforms that connect finance, enrollment, marketing, and instruction, and automation pipelines that give operators their time back. As CTO, my focus is on three things: building systems that tear down the walls between departments, shipping AI-powered tools that raise the floor on what every team can accomplish, and making sure every line of code ultimately serves the families, students, and school leaders we exist for. I lead from the keyboard as much as from the conference room — writing production code, designing schemas, drafting technical specs, and embedding with the teams doing the work. Foundationally educated at the University of California, Berkeley. Committed to proving that K-12 operations can run on software as sophisticated as anything in the private sector — and that the people closest to the work should be the ones building it.

Skills

  • Systems Management
  • Programming
  • Marketing Strategy

Additional experience

  • System Operations Specialist

    Academica

    June 2019 – January 2026

Education

  • Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), University of California, Berkeley