About Ryan

Ryan Prior is an author and journalist telling stories at the front lines of science and democracy. Over the past 12 years, he has written hundreds of stories for CNN, Psychology Today, The Guardian, The Nation, STAT, USA Today, and The Daily Beast. He has produced work across documentary film, nonprofits, book publishing, and think tanks. His reporting spans pandemic response, science policy, geopolitical conflict, and national security. His recent experience includes field reporting in Ukraine, along with study trips to Israel/Palestine, the Balkans, and Western Europe through Harvard Kennedy School and RIAS. Ryan recently served as a fellow/journalist-in-residence at The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank in Washington, D.C. His book, The Long Haul: How Long Covid Survivors Are Revolutionizing Healthcare, was published in paperback March 5, 2024 through MIT Press and distributed by Penguin Random House. An entrepreneurial reporter, he launched his career in 2013 by hitting the road to co-direct, produce, and write a feature-length documentary, Forgotten Plague, which the Huffington Post called a "Must-See Documentary.” For that work, he was named a Stanford Medicine X ePatient Scholar five times. He began at CNN in 2015, worked with its political team during the 2016 election, and later served as a science and health features writer during the COVID-19 pandemic. He holds a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was a William A. Starr Journalism Innovations Fellow. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Georgia, through its Honors College, and was named to the school’s “40 Under 40” alumni list in 2018. When he’s not reporting or writing, you find Ryan watching Georgia Bulldogs football, reading Tolstoy, traveling to 30 countries (Iceland was most recent), trying to nail a Spanish classical tune on his guitar, or serving corner kicks in a pickup soccer game. Whether writing investigative features, producing documentaries, or building platforms for public dialogue, Ryan’s north star is the same: to tell stories that illuminate higher ideals and drive action toward common good.