As Executive Chair of Psychology Beyond Borders, Dr. Ryan led impact initiatives and collaborative partnerships around the world to assist women in Ethiopia suffering the psychological distress of fistula and their babies’ deaths due to malnutrition, pregnancy and childbirth before their bodies were ready; widows in refugee camps in Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the tsunami struggling to forge a living; entrepreneurial women of East Timor — survivors of rape, determined to build new lives; children in South Africa whose families have been wiped out by HIV/AIDS; displaced people in Haiti as they struggled for meaning following the devastation of the earthquake; children, families and communities in north eastern Uganda whose lives had been decimated by armed conflict; and families in New Orleans whose distress following Hurricane Katrina was compounded by delayed institutional responses.

Dr. Ryan is also co-founder and Executive Chair of the Tingari-Silverton Foundation. The Foundation supports projects around the globe including partnerships with local NGO’s assisting women who suffer fistula and associated grief; microfinance initiatives in East Timor, Haiti and low income neighborhoods of Austin, Texas; restoration of sight to indigenous Australians, Vietnamese and Sri Lankans; providing computers for education of orphaned children in South Africa; and many more life-altering projects. The Tingari-Silverton Foundation initiated and implemented, along with Ernst & Young, the annual Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award, now in existence for 10 years. For its collaborative efforts, the Tingari-Silverton Foundation was awarded “Outstanding Foundation of Central Texas” at the 2005 Philanthropy Day Awards.

As founder of the Shine A Light Narrative Therapy Research Fund, Pamela supported valuable research on narrative approaches to individual, family and community psychosocial practice.

As Managing Partner of the Tingari Group, Pamela leads the transition of the group to apply an impact lens to all that we do. The group is committed to ensuring activities and investments result in net positive impacts. This means investing in bonds, for example, that are innovative, impactful system-changing initiatives, directed at education, water and food security, natural disaster preparedness, affordable housing and renewable energy in underserved populations. An impact lens means demanding evidence of how the companies and funds in which we invest actively minimize negative social and environmental impacts and maximized positive. And investing with an impact lens means amplifying our ecosystems perspective and intensifying our focus on entrepreneurs and organizations who are applying a “do no further harm” lens to all activities and investments to guard against the possibility that in supporting an initiative in one part of the global ecosystem, we are not inadvertently creating negative social or environmental impacts in another. As a result, the Tingari Group has invested in new forms of vaccine delivery with the potential to revolutionize prevention of killer diseases, particularly in developing countries; disadvantaged school districts in south Texas; massive regeneration of cattle-grazed land with the planting of some 10,000 native trees; women-led businesses in social innovation for education; and venture capital for education, healthcare and renewable energy.

For ten years, the Tingari-Silverton Foundation partnered with Ernst & Young to recognize societal change agents in the Austin non-profit ecosystem. The Social Entrepreneur Award honored creators of innovative approaches to social and environmental challenges that transform the status quo and change lives for the better.