Greater Wyoming Valley Chamber's Young Professionals Conference keynote speaker Ryan Evans shares life story

Mar. 20—WILKES-BARRE — Ryan Evans methodically told his story — a compelling story at that — of his life struggles and, most importantly, his ultimate success.

Evans, 31, of Kingston, was the keynote speaker at Wednesday's Greater Wyoming Valley Chamber's Young Professionals Conference at Wilkes-Barre's THINK Center, 7 S. Main St.

"This life, at times, will be absolutely brutal," Evans told the large group. "It will take everything from you — it'll take your desire to keep going from you. It'll take your self-respect and your self-confidence, it'll take your self-esteem and your love. And at moments, it'll be incredibly vibrant and full of love and understanding. Just remember that no matter how ugly it gets, it does not make the experience any less beautiful."

Evans spoke for about 20 minutes, keeping his audience riveted to every word, and at the end, they gave him a rousing round of applause.

"I hope you understand how cathartic it is for me to tell this story, and I hope you all feel empowered to tell your own," Evans said. "This is what redemption is — it's returning to the scene, and making peace, and acknowledging, I don't live there anymore. I am not what happened to me. I am how I choose to keep going. Hatred is baggage, and may it never stick around long enough to make any of us bitter."

Evans said having a chance to fail is "a beautiful thing" and that failure itself can be such a tool for positivity.

"Take it from a guy who has failed more than he's succeeded — failure is where the greatest lessons are," Evans said. "And the larger a stage you can fail upon, the better. Failure is nothing more than a catalyst for improvement."

Evans said he realizes he's not what you would call traditionally or classically professional.

Referring to himself as "a doofus" and "a jackass," Evans went on to show why he was chosen as the keynote speaker.

"My understanding is that I am here today to light fires under your collective asses," Evans said. "And the only real way I know to do that is by telling you a bit about my life — and to preface that, I have not had it any better or any worse than anyone. I've simply just had my experiences and learned a thing or two along the way. A lot of it was bad and required me to either stagnate and accept my circumstances, or change them."

That said, Evans told his story of pain and suffering, of being down and out, of being strung out and aimless, and of redemption and embracing all of the negativity a life can contain and channeling it into something greater.

Evans talked about "the person in the mirror" because he feels that's where the most important work takes place — in the mirror.

"I hope you'll want to inspire someone else, and I hope, perhaps like me, you'll find something here today that helps you redefine what the 'Young Professional' really is," Evans said. "Because to me, it's not a suit and tie anymore, sitting in a boardroom. As we become tomorrow's senior leaders, we can accommodate the next generation of young professionals and give them the tools to step into their leadership roles."

Evans then proceeded to "talk about some heavy stuff" — stating that his life has not been one of great privilege or of great circumstance.

"It's been one of heartache and hard work and dusting myself off repeatedly and wanting the throw in the towel," he said. "I just wanted to stop hurting. I mean, hell, there was a time when I didn't even want to 'be.' For the longest time, I was a depressed, drug-addled, sensitive kid just trying to come to terms with his past and find his place in this life without having to suffer any more heartbreak."

Evans said he never asked to grow up in an abusive household and to be put through the ringer for two-plus decades. He never asked to have to listen to his mother being abused for the first nine years of his life.

"I never asked for those guns to go off in my childhood bedroom like they did," Evans said. "I never asked for my brother and I to be robbed of our innocence and our childhoods, to be exposed to brutal reality so early and to have to spend our adult lives battling those demons. I never asked to find myself hooked on painkillers and questioning if I wanted to live anymore. I never asked to be entertaining suicide at 18. I never asked to live in constant fear of failure or to be told I'm not good enough and to be told a lot of my personality is based on trauma responses. And I damn sure never asked for depression, or anxiety, or impostor syndrome."

And yet, Evans said, those are things he endured.

Evans offered candid, brutally honest accounts of his struggles, all told as the crowd sat in awe as each detail came out.

Evans said he was living a double life — in school, he always had straight As, was on national junior honor societies and involved in Junior Leadership, played sports, and tested for a 147 IQ.

"Unfortunately, I was already impacted by the things I had seen at home and was quickly losing interest in my future," Evans said. "At 9, I had smoked pot for the first time. At 13, I had a pack-a-day cigarette habit, was stoned every day, always trying to steal booze, and by 14, graduated to hard drugs. With the onset of puberty came my openness to abstract concepts, and I realized just how badly damaged I was."

Evans would enlist in the U.S. Navy, but he said he still hated the guy in the mirror and he still wasn't ready to forgive. He said he was just in a new place with the same problems. He said he couldn't do drugs anymore, so he drank all the pain away.

But Evans did very well in the military — he was promoted four times, named sailor of the quarter twice, earned supervisory roles and received a Navy and Marine Corps achievement medal.

When he was discharged, he moved back into his mom's house and he enrolled at LCCC, and very quickly got noticed.

"But at my core, I was still a scared, damaged little boy, and I fell apart once more," he said.

He left school and resolved to use that summer to work on himself.

He said he found three important quotes that have changed his way of looking at things:

—The first, an old punk rock ethos of Positive Mental Attitude, or PMA. "No matter what you may do, we got that attitude — be negative, fine, but we won't entertain it."

—The second, a quote by French Philosopher and Nobel Prize Recipient, Albert Camus, that reads, "In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer."

—And finally, he said he found his mantra in Ernest Hemingway, who said, "There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility lies in being superior to your former self."

"To this day, with this quote in mind, every morning I wake up and look at the guy in the mirror," Evans said. "And I see someone I love and respect, which is still new to me because I hated myself for so long. So, I give him the compassion he deserves, and I allow for a moment of reflection, then I mercilessly kick his ass every day, because that's where the competition is. It's not outdoing your rival in the boardroom. It's not being better than your coworkers so you can throw someone under the bus to get 'Employee of the Month.' It's not me against you. In the words of Punk legends Bad Brains, it's I Against I."

Evans went on, saying, "It's simply a matter of doing the brutal, yet necessary work of self-love. And yeah, that requires honesty, and sometimes we don't want to be honest with yourselves, but once you are, you'll learn just how much of any outcome is up to your own control."

It's only been very recently that Evans started to ask, "Why not me?"

"We are not the products of our environments — we are the architects of them," he said.

Evans graduated from James M. Coughlin High School in 2011, continued on to Luzerne County Community College and in 2021, graduated with an associate degree in journalism and media writing. Evans transferred to Wilkes University to finish his bachelor's degree and became a first-generation college graduate last May, earning a Bachelor of Arts in communication with a focus in multimedia platforms. It was during this time Evans also worked as a reporter for the Times Leader newspaper.

Prior to finishing his undergrad, Evans was accepted to Northwestern University's Graduate School of Communication where he is actively pursuing his master's degree. His research involves ethical practices pertaining to automation and artificial intelligence in strategic communications.