Meet Ryan

Ryan has a bachelor's degree in English and secondary education from Beloit College, and a master's degree in negotiation, conflict resolution and peacebuilding from California State University, Dominguez Hills, with coursework on the ground in Israel and Palestine.

A lifelong activist, Clancy’s advocacy has taken him to the Philippines, where he served as a Peace Corps volunteer, to Indonesia, where he trained to do unarmed protective accompaniment for human rights volunteers, and to Iraq, where he worked with students and protested the occupation in 2003. Closer to home, he worked in Virginia with youth from areas of conflict around the world, protested at Standing Rock, and has been arrested or risked arrest protesting for immigrant rights in Milwaukee and Racine.

A frequent volunteer with disaster relief organizations, Ryan has deployed to do disaster relief work in areas of natural disasters across the country and to warming rooms in Milwaukee County. He also regularly volunteers as a legal observer with the ACLU.

Ryan taught for Milwaukee Public Schools for years, first as a substitute teacher, where he became familiar with schools and families across the city, and then in a project-based MPS school, and has continued to advocate for public schools, students and families.

Since 2014, Ryan and his wife Becky have run a bar/restaurant/community center/entertainment complex in Milwaukee. Based on that experience, he founded the Progressive Restaurant and Activists of Wisconsin Network, which advocates for higher wages, abolition of the sub-minimum wage, paid time-off and better working conditions for employees in the service industry.

In 2020, Clancy was elected to represent Milwaukee County’s 4th District as a County Supervisor, becoming the first socialist elected to public office in Milwaukee since 1956; he was re-elected in the spring of 2022. During that time, he authored or sponsored more than a hundred pieces of legislation, including paid parental leave, carceral harm reduction, the Right to Shelter and the Right to Counsel, which made Milwaukee County the first county to provide free legal representation for residents facing eviction.

In November of 2022, he won election to Wisconsin’s 19th Assembly District, and was sworn in on January 3rd, 2022.

Ryan serves on the Assembly Committee on Corrections, Assembly Committee on Government Accountability and Oversight, the Assembly Committee on Housing and Real Estate and was appointed to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee.

Ryan and Becky have five amazing children: Desmond, James, Alex, Sebastian and Fiona.