Dee Ryan is an adjunct professor of comedy and improvisation in the Department of Radio, Television and Film at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. She teaches acting, ensemble and improvisation to sketch at The Second City Conservatory in Chicago, IL and Hollywood, CA. She has also worked as a corporate consultant, speechwriter and performance coach at ASUG in Chicago, IL.

Dee Ryan is a proud alumna of The Second City in Chicago writing and performing reviews on The Second City E.T.C. stage. In Chicago, she performed with actors and writers Steve Carell, Adam McKay, Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, Jon Favreau, Neil Flynn, Scott Adsit, Dave Koechner, and Horatio Sans. On television, you may have seen her in TheOffice, The Practice, 10 Items or Less, the Showtime pilot USA of Tara and as a lead, Sylvie, in Commuter Confidential on TBS.

On stage, Dee tours with Joe Liss in the improvised two-hander Misery Loves Company last seen at The Rochester Theater Festival in 2025. She tours and leads workshops with Hodge Podge, an all female long-for improv company from Chicago’s Bughouse Theater. Dee originated the role of Dee in The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s production of The Complete Millennium Musical (abridged) touring nationally and internationally and performed with Modern Problems in Science at the Adelaide Comedy Festival in Adelaide, Australia. Dee is an original cast member of The Armando Diaz Experience and Hootenany,Stacy’s Not Here and The All Girl Revue - winner of the Audience Award at the 2010 Women in Comedy Festival in Boston, MA.

As playwright, in September of 2020, Dee’s solo Shakespeare piece, Broadguess, was performed at Flatwater Shakespeare’s Unshaken Festival in Flatwater, Nebraska. DeeConstruction, Dee’s personal solo show, has been performed at such venues as Pittsburgh Public Theater, Merrimack Repertory Theater and the Reston Center Theater, as well as the fanaticSalon, IO Hollywood and UCB stages and was pitched as a graphic novel; the illustrated Dee has a waist. Dee Contributed additional material to the stage play The Complete Millennium Musical (abridged) published by Broadway Play Publishing; and Co-wrote Fatwah Caprice with Russ Lees and Dave Razowsky which was produced at the Zephyr theater in LA. Her essays have appeared in Brainchild, The Chicago Muse and the online salon Freshyarn. As a screenwriter: Dee adapted Susan Patron’s Newberry Award winning children’s book The Higher Power of Lucky for Pistor Productions; the tentatively titled Master Debaters; All the Other Reindeers with Austin Tichenor, and worked in development on Fowl Play for Disney Animated Features. For television, she produced and co-wrote Wrecked (sizzle reel pilot) for Eyeboogie Productions, as well as contributing sketches for HBO’s Sketchpad and additional material to the TBS pilot The Week Reduced and a Second City women’s comedy news pilot.

Dee is a member of the North Shore Shakespeare Society and the online Shakespeare Bio-fiction Club. In 2010, Dee taught a Shakespeare English immersion theater camp in Beijing, China. Dee still improvises all around Chicago and hosts, produces and curates a monthly storytelling show, Louder Than a Mom, at Martrys. She studied improvisation with Del Close, Mick Napier and Charna Halpern. Dee graduated from The Boston Conservatory and has a certificate in writing from UCLA.