About the founder

Meet Aby Ryan, CEO & Founder

Aby Ryan founded Athena Camps in 2011 after a successful career as a professional tennis player, collegiate coach, and non-profit executive. With over 35 years of experience coaching and developing programs for girl-serving organizations, Aby specializes in leadership, curriculum design, and innovative strategies to grow strong, expressive, confident girls and women.

With her daughter Jordan started kindergarten, Aby Ryan saw a need for a place where girls could navigate social pressures, build character, and support each other. She realized the time had come to implement her dream of creating a girls’ sports camp.  After meeting with her God daughters, Sara (10) and Julia (8) over hot chocolate at Starbucks, Athena Camps – Sports and Crafts for Girls – was born.   June 11, 2011, she launched the first Athena Camp with 27 girls. Athena Camps’ attendance quadrupled in the year. Since then, many of our campers have become staff at Athena, including Jordan.  Athena Camps continues to grow each year and hopes to serve 5,000 girls by 2025.

Recently, Aby Brayton Ryan was selected as one of 101 people in DE.CODED – A HUMAN ATLAS OF SILICON VALLEY.  De.coded is an exploration of 101 remarkable change makers from Silicon Valley commissioned by the David & Lucile Packard Foundation. This multi-media book was built on a year-long nomination process where a group of local grassroots leaders and researchers nominated extraordinary individuals, from across all their networks and communities, who have made extraordinary contributions to the region and beyond and represent the exceptional diversity of the valley.
The final work brings together the portraits, oral histories and ancestral DNA maps of this remarkable cohort to inspire a deeper understanding of our humanity and the importance of service in our societies.