Ryan Sears – Candidate for Regional Advocate 2025 – Great Lakes

Note: This is a candidate page for a Judge Foundry Election. Information on this page is provided by the candidate, and does not represent the opinions or positions of the Elections Committee or of Judge Foundry. For more information about this election, see the schedule and index for the Elections at the 2025 Annual Meeting.

Nomination Statement

Hello! My name is Ryan Sears and I am running for the position of Regional Advocate of the Great Lakes region.

Khailyn has been the RA of the Great Lakes region and he has done incredible work. He’s been a champion for regional judges and judging as a whole. The Great Lakes region has been incredibly fortunate to have him. This year, I am glad to see him announce that he is running for a seat on the Board of Directors – a big step up! I have a positive vision of how I imagine our region, and with Khailyn potentially moving into a Board seat, I want to do my part to make sure that the region is well represented in the event that he is elected to the Board and I am not.

Except for a brief stint in the Northeast, I am a lifelong Michigander and got my start with an L1 certification 8 years ago, and my L2 shortly after. This year at SCG Con Charlotte, I was happy to pass my L3 Exam. From 2021 to early 2025, I lived in the Northeast for a PhD, but I left that program and experimented with two other career paths: teaching (math, middle and high school) and owning and operating a Local Game Store for three years (selling this year). Both experiences have been enriching both personally and professionally, and they’ve made me a better Magic Judge as well. 

As a math teacher, I became a better mentor and developed some more sophisticated conflict resolution skills. Learning about learning and getting the practice to apply those principles in the classroom has made me a better hands-on mentor on the floor than I was, and I am proud of the feedback that I write. I also learned some programmatic skills like developing and implementing a curriculum that I hope to use to address some concerns with testing.

As an LGS owner focusing mostly on Magic, my perspective of the relationships between T.O.s, Judges, and Players shifted dramatically. It’s easy to talk about how T.O.s might be hesitant to hire a random Judge they don’t know for their RCQ, it’s different to feel it and be put into that decision-making position. It’s tremendously helpful to understand what the costs for the LGS are as a business, both implicit and explicit, and the risks they may feel they are taking, to host and sanction local Competitive REL events such as RCQs and $1ks. This knowledge isn’t exclusive to owners of LGS’s – much of it is learned through game store osmosis, but to reach a certain depth of these perspectives took me a lot of exposure in these roles.

At a local level, L1s, players’ tournament sense, and the quality of RCQs show a lot of room for improvement. Many relationships between LGSs and Judges (especially in small cities) were damaged or lost. There has been a lot of work done in and out of the scope of Judge Foundry to repair those relationships and standards, but the work isn’t over yet. 

As an RA, I would be committed to a positive vision of Judging in the Great Lakes that prioritizes the development and hands-on care of Judges who need it, with special targeting and followup for recently certified L1s. By taking the steps to habitually include newcomers who don’t yet have roots in the Judge community, we ensure its longevity. For more experienced Judges, my target goal would be to work with as many as feasible to further develop mentorship and leadership norms for the region, vertically aligned with the goals highlighted for L1s.

The principles of education, mentorship, community building, and leadership are almost entirely program agnostic and can be developed independently. In short, my work as an RA would be focused on strengthening the ecosystem of Judges in our region with targeted developments for leadership and retention. I’m optimistic for the future of Judging, and I’ll be lending a hand in whatever capacity I can. I hope to take all of my experiences and synthesize them into a force forward for Judges and Judging as a whole.

Q1: Judge Program Direction

Question: This year, many members are uncertain about our future due to Wizards of the Coast’s announcement of a new Judge Program Manager role. How will you support your region through this uncertainty and potential transition?

I will support the Judges of my region by encouraging their autonomy and continuing to advocate for them, regardless of their certification, if they would like me to do so.

There are a number of ways that the upcoming Judge Program could be organized, and many of them include the possibility that for individual members, Judge Foundry would become redundant. Or, perhaps JudgeFoundry exists as a resource for practicing and networking via JudgeApps, or many other options. It’s impossible to say at this time.

However, I believe that for any certifying body, its existence is warranted by the members it serves and not the other way around. Many people have decided not to participate with JudgeFoundry for reasons I respect, and they may continue to decline, or instead, opt in to this new program as well. Regardless, they’ll almost certainly still be hired at events, and it helps no one in our region to not be a beacon of support for anyone who asks for it from the current JF hierarchy in a time of unknowns and transition.

Tangible support items could include aggressive outreach about the new program and Judge Foundry’s place in it as we learn more, becoming educated about the transition to answer direct questions, direct contact with new Program Leadership, and providing the support that we can to encourage Judges to make decisions that are right for themselves.

Q2: Local Judges and Judging

Question: As a Regional Advocate, how will you support local judges and encourage local judging in your region?

Supporting local judges and judging is a complex issue that I am prepared to tackle, and I am intent on taking as many tangible steps as I can to strengthen the quality of both local Regular and Competitive play within the region. 

The dynamics of this involve a few moving parts – at the heart of the issue, T.O.s must feel it is worth both running an event and providing adequate compensation. After lockdown, many T.O.s expressed frustration with hiring Judges who were underqualified for their level, and much of that sentiment lingers. We can create strong Judges, but without an adequate dialogue between Judges and T.O.s, uptake will remain low between LGSs and local judges.

These relationships take time to build, but spearheading a strategy that involves outreach to LGSs and outreach to Judges within the region on how to navigate things like fair compensation, LGS soft skills, and knowing what a T.O. is looking for in addition to the “hard” skills tested by the L1 Exam, I believe, will strengthen the health of the program overall and create a stronger bond between local LGSs and their Judges. 

Action items to accomplish these goals include minimally intrusive L1 certification followups to prevent “homeless” judges and a unified message and outreach to LGSs about the value add that Judges can have for their events, and remaining as highly visible as an RA as possible so that region Judges find you approachable. 

Q3: Programs and Projects

Question: How do you plan to use Conferences and other major projects like Exemplar or this year’s Review Competition to support and grow your region?

Conferences and other major projects require two major things to function: interest and accessibility. 

Accessibility should be the easier part: we advertise heavily how to run a Conference or participate in a project, we have a healthy and transparent system that can handle the paperwork, and we follow internal deadlines so that Judges know they are participating in a functioning program. 

Project participation is maybe unintuitive in how to increase it because it’s ultimately a litmus test of how valuable Judges feel the program is worth engaging in. Conferences and other projects like Exemplar and the Review Competition are community based and community focused – so, if Judges don’t feel like they’re part of a strong community or that their program doesn’t adequately represent them, participation will be low. 

Strong external incentives (like the foils of the old Exemplar program) create situations where Judges do things for the wrong reasons and may ultimately distort the quality and experience of that Conference or project for everyone. 

The only way to use Conferences and Major projects is through both the necessary systems baseline and to work hard in other areas of the Judge program. When people are excited to be Judges, they’ll be excited to do Judge things.

I believe that the goals I’ve highlighted for myself for the program in other questions work towards accomplishing this reality, and I’m excited to see it come together.