Student Outcomes, Ashley Ryan

Hi! My name is Ashley Ryan and I am currently in Commercial Real Estate doing Project Management for Avison Young in NYC. I graduated from Penn State in 2021 with a major in Criminology and a minor in Human Development and Family Studies. I originally went to college with the intention of being a lawyer and was lucky enough to intern under a judge for several summers.

In 2020, when the world felt like it was ending due to COVID-19, I began to second think my career plan. I took time to decide if law was a career I was genuinely interested in or just something that felt familiar. That fall, I made the hard decision to not go to law school. This left me in a state of anxiety and confusion with what I was going to do next. My dad works in real estate and suggested that I get my real estate license to have as a “back up.”

Following my graduation from Penn State in 2021, I took my real estate exam and passed on the first try. I was thrilled and now felt a sense of security in my future. I was lucky enough to get an opportunity to work at Avison Young, a global real estate company, doing Project Management and Business Development. This was a job I had never even heard about, yet its description matched everything I was interested in. I am currently in charge of helping manage multiple commercial real estate office build outs from beginning to end. I am constantly on the go, checking on different job sites and meeting new people every day.

A year later since starting at Avison Young, I can happily say that I am so thankful I made that hard decision to change my career path senior year and I am now doing what I love. I hope my story can inspire some of you to not always stick to what you think you should do in life, but rather take a chance and see where you can end up in your career.