Ryan Sears – Candidate for Board of Directors 2025

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 a seat on the Board of Directors. I’ll use this nomination statement to talk about my Judge history, some general JudgeFoundry (JF) things, my vision for the judge program, and things I think I can do on the Board to help Judges.

I was certified for Level 1 in the Fall of 2018. I passed my L2 Exam the day before the transition to Judge Academy. Finally, under JF, I passed my L3 Policy Exam in March of this year. For the last seven years, I’ve been engaged with the Judge program about as much as I could be – like running local Judge classes to build a community in an underserved area, presenting at multiple conferences, and working on multiple education and mentorship projects such as RulesDayTuesday many years ago to (I promise, Matt!) the recent revival of Knowledge Pool. Education and mentorship have been a big part of my life generally, and of course in Judging as well.

In terms of JF, it is in a strange place at the moment. With the recent knowledge that Wizards of the Coast (WotC) is developing their own Judge Program, there are a lot of open questions and not very many answers about what the future of JF will be or when it will change. And before that, there are numerous ways that JF can be improved to better represent the interest of Judges, but I’m confident that we can solve these issues and that I have the skills necessary and the goodness of fit for a Board member to do so. For instance, much of the feedback I’ve seen involves systemic issues in the way that the Board manages itself and holds itself accountable. In my day-to-day life, I prefer to be an overcommunicator, and I like to plainly focus on problems and how to fix them. I strive to be earnest and unassuming. In the Judge world, there are a lot of smart people with good ideas and big personalities – knowing how to work with them tactfully is a skill that I can bring to the table. It’s a skill that I’ve honed working years in business and education.

Additionally, some of the sentiment I’ve heard from Judges is that the Board seems more focused on higher level Judges than L1 development. This is a tough issue – I think it’s both true and also a very hard problem. It is a problem worth thinking about deeply and creatively, and it alongside testing and educational content improvements are areas that I am the most passionate about developing further. I plan to use my experience to help introduce research based practices into how testing is used, testing accessibility, and to work to align test questions with modern education standards. I would also like to establish some sort of follow-up or outreach program to help L1s assimilate into larger networks of Judges and to not float away.

Overall, what I want to emphasize most is that while there are some things that need to be done specifically with JF, the principles that we hold close to judging – the principles of education, mentorship, community building, and leadership are almost entirely program agnostic and should be developed in ways that outlive the program you learned them under. My work as a Board Member would be focused on strengthening the ecosystem of Judges everywhere with developments for education and by being someone that has the experience and follow-through to commit to problem solving and large scale projects, such as the eventual navigation of JF’s place in the world of WotC’s Judge Program. Specifically, I want the work that we do to have lasting positive effects on everyone in or around Judging, even if JF ceases operations in the future and the talent that is developed is instead transferred somewhere else. 

I’m optimistic for the future of Judging, and I’ll be lending a hand in whatever capacity I can. I hope for the opportunity to take all of my experiences and synthesize them into a force forward for Judges and Judging as a whole as a member of the Board.

Q1: Judge Program Direction

Question: It appears that one of this board’s main responsibilities will be to either navigate our relationship with Wizards of the Coast’s new Judge Program Manager, or manage a transition from Judge Foundry back to Wizards of the Coast. How would you navigate this situation?

The core reasons to be on the Board are a commitment to the betterment of Judges and Judging combined with a good work ethic and an ability to lead. Additionally, 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 join this new program as well. Regardless, they all deserve leadership that is willing to put in the work and collaborate to make systems that are efficient, transparent, and to the betterment of our community. 

The upcoming program could be organized in many ways. Many include the possibility that Judge Foundry becomes redundant or dissolves. Or, perhaps JudgeFoundry exists as a supplemental educational and social resource. It’s impossible to say at this time. We also aren’t yet confident when this new program will arrive. My biggest fear for JudgeFoundry and the Board is that a creeping sense of despondency will cause us to lose focus in how we operate.

But my commitment is the same – the betterment of Judging and Judges, not loyalty to any particular program. I intend to remain a strong advocate for Judges through JudgeFoundry, however long that will be, and onwards to whatever may come. I am prepared to be adaptive, flexible, and vigilant.

Q2: Non-Profit Administration

Question: What skills, experience, or plans would you bring to this role in non-profit administration?

First, not for nothing, my undergraduate degree and the start of my PhD program were in Economics. Specific facts about theory aren’t that useful in most everyday settings, but getting hours of practice thinking critically about incentives and policies and how they can have quantifiable outcomes and how to measure them is a part of that skillset that I think could serve me well on the Board.

Second, I co-founded and was the managing member of an LGS for about 3 years, ending in December of ‘24 when I decided to sell my share and move back to Michigan. The business was doing well, but even if it hadn’t been, I became very familiar with basic accounting and bookkeeping techniques on top of what I had learned in school. I can confidently read financial statements and have a more than basic Excel and Google Sheets competency in addition to the leadership practice.

Before the business, I’d spent two years as a middle/high school math teacher in a high-need school. Teachers do have it as rough as they say – managing endless emails and learning where to prioritize the next most important task for classroom administration was paramount. Though difficult, it was an experience I cherish and it helped me gain the resilience to eventually navigate the difficulties of starting and managing a business, and hopefully, to do well on the Board.

I’m excited for the opportunity to synthesize these experiences and my years of judging to proactively help the Judging community.

Q3: Member Benefits and Resources

Question: How do you think Judge Foundry should best use its limited resources to benefit the members?

The most pressing issue for me in the use of resources and benefits is this: what happens to the collected dues if JudgeFoundry dissolves due to the new judge program? Right now, there’s a good bit of money accessible to JF, and there may come a time when it has to be used up. We owe it to our members who have paid months or years of dues, perhaps even if they leave for the new program before we can spend it all. I am committed to doing what I can to work with the board to flesh out a transparent and equitable failsafe for the funds to be used in the event that JudgeFoundry ceases operations.

The number one thing I’d like to see more is high quality conferences. Conferences take a lot of work, and their varying quality reflects this. I believe there is room for some better systems work to make the process for getting higher quality Conference funding approved more efficient. I would also like to brainstorm and get very creative in how we can use JF resources to help prop up local judging at LGSs, which is suffering. 

Overall, I believe much of the work has already been done – members have great ideas on how they’d like JF to allocate these resources, but the program has been slow to respond. I think JF should use its resources to carry out its current responsibilities with more integrity before adding on more, but I would like to do both.