Young Alumni Achievement Award 2020: Ryan Silbert '02

Bio

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Ryan Silbert is a writer, author, producer, and founder of Origin Story Entertainment, a multi-platform entertainment company with a global focus on storytelling. Silbert is also the co-creator of The New York Times bestseller Stan Lee’s Alliances: A Trick of Light, an original, first-of-its-kind audio storytelling event produced by Amazon’s Audible Studios and starring GROWN ISH’s Yara Shahidi. Created by Silbert, Luke Lieberman, and Stan Lee in the late cultural icon’s final collaboration, A Trick of Light debuted as an Audible Original and was published as a hardcover by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Audible recently greenlighted Silbert’s next project, an expansion of the Stan Lee’s Alliances universe created alongside Luke Lieberman and Lee himself.

With work recognized by the Academy Awards®, the Canadian Academy of Film & Television, Sundance, MoMa, IFP, the Toronto International Film Festival, and the Berlinale, Silbert’s expansive repertoire includes such films as the Academy Award-winning GOD OF LOVE and Spike Lee’s THE GIRL IS IN TROUBLE. As the founder of Origin Story Entertainment, Silbert is currently in development on television, film, and immersive narratives projects, including a feature film adaptation of Stephen King’s  The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon with Village Roadshow, Roy Lee’s Vertigo Entertainment (It, Lego Movie) and Sanibel Films; and the audio drama series The Coldest Case: A Black Book Drama starring Aaron Paul, Nathalie Emmanuel, Krysten Ritter and based on James Patterson’s best seller, The Black Book. 

Ryan is an appointed member of the Cornell Department of Communication Advisory Board and Cornell University Council. He graduated with honors from Cornell University with a dual degree in communications and business and received his MFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Film Program, where he also completed a post-doc investigating immersive narratives in games and film. As a writer and producer he is currently represented by Foundry Literary+Media. 

Reflection Statement

I would like to thank the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the CALS Alumni Association for this incredible honor.   

My first thought in receiving the news and in looking at the long lineage of recipients of this award is that the selection committee clearly emailed the wrong Ryan. There is nothing like an award from your alma mater to trigger those dreams of being late to class, forgetting your homework or being a few credits short of graduating. 

And while the mystery of why I would be selected for this award will remain that, a mystery. I know what Cornell and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences has meant to me and to many of the recipients of this award. CALS has always represented a sense of place, a sense of community. I met some of my best friends here as well as mentors and teachers who have shaped me personally and professionally.  

But what I wasn’t prepared for as a student was that the CALS experience is one that extends well past the years spent in Ithaca. And I think, in the challenging times we are now in - this sense of shared community is why the College, its students, alumni, faculty, and staff are uniquely positioned to succeed. Because for CALS, community isn’t always about the place, it’s been about bringing together a group of incredible people to support one another in their studies, academic dreams and curiosities.  

This curiosity starts at the beginning for many students like myself who enter the college asking a question, “Why is it that the Communication department and Business school are in the Ag School?”  

That the entire CALS experience can start with a question is seemingly simple, but monumental. It’s that kind of questioning that I think is part and parcel to life long education - it is applied science to show concern for your community, embrace change, and look outside the obvious for answers. My career as a storyteller, ironically has taught me to approach life not as a narrative linear story, but as a mystery to be solved. That’s the CALS way - to keep those invisible antennas on our heads up and buzzing and why I remain an active and engaged part of our shared CALS fellowship as it continues to grow through the years.

I am very humbled and grateful to receive this honor from an institution and group of people I care deeply about. Thank you for this honor.