We’re Closing the Education and Economic Opportunity Gaps
Curriculum and tools to prepare our youth for the realities of a rapidly changing economy.
We provide practical, culturally relevant curriculum on personal branding, entrepreneurship, and intellectual property—tools that help students lead, influence, and build income-based opportunities through their intangible assets.
Our work centers on reducing persistent, systemic inequalities:
The Education Gap
Too few schools teach branding, business formation, contracts, or IP.
Students graduate with no roadmap for managing their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) or building long-term value from their talents and digital presence.
IC Royalty fills this gap with accessible curriculum, toolkits, and educator resources that develop personal and professional leadership, entrepreneurial thinking, and IP literacy skills.
The Economic Opportunity Gap
Wealth inequality continues to grow—especially in under-resourced communities.
Meanwhile, 40% of jobs are projected to be disrupted by AI and automation (IMF, 2024), and over half of U.S. teens believe they’ll need to build a personal brand to be financially secure (JA & CNBC, 2023).
Our curriculum equips students with the tools to build self-agency, generate value from their ideas, and explore new income pathways—whether through entrepreneurship or as intrapreneurs within institutions.
IC Royalty stands for “Ideas Create Royalties”.
We believe every individual has four basic intangible assets:
1. Name, 2. Image, 3. Likeness, and 4. Ideas.
Our programs teach that proper management of intangibles like Ideas, NIL, and IP Create Influence, and influence creates Income-Generating opportunies.
Our programs are built on three guiding principles:
I.) NIL as a universal language of personal branding. While the primary focus has been on Student-athletes, We teach that NIL applies equally to creators, entrepreneurs, and anyone building a successful Professional Brand and Income-generating opportunities.
II.) Ideas drive influence; and
III.) Influence creates income-generating opportunies
Our Mission: provide education and tools to help organizations support students, athletes, and creators translate their intangibles into sustainable impact and financial opportunities.
IC Royalty provides Education That Builds Leaders, Personal Brands, and Businesses
💡Bring our curriculum, tools, and trainings to your school, program, or organization.
About the Founder – IC Royalty
Ryan A., Esq. is the visionary founder behind IC Royalty—a mission-driven initiative dedicated to helping youth, creators, and emerging leaders harness the power of their name, image, likeness, and ideas to build lasting economic and personal value.
Ryan’s journey began in Newport News, Virginia, where, at just 23 years old, he taught high school seniors as a history teacher after graduating from Hampton University—one of the most prestigious HBCUs in the country. These early years in education ignited a lifelong commitment to mentorship, purpose, and impact.
After two years of teaching, Ryan pursued his JD-MBA, and while in law school, he served as the Resident Director for the Sylvan Beach Foundation in Baltimore. There, he helped marginalized young men rebuild their lives through a youth-run ice cream company—an experience that cemented his belief in business as a path to self-agency.
Upon graduating, Ryan joined the U.S. Peace Corps, serving as a Small Business Advisor in rural Kenya. He helped women entrepreneurs and self-help groups develop microenterprises and gain access to financing—an experience that shaped his global perspective on economic empowerment and sustainability.
Returning to the U.S., Ryan became a licensed financial advisor and stockbroker before taking the Bar Exam and launching his legal career in civil litigation. His business background led him to work on the Fannie Mae litigation in Washington, D.C., during the fallout of the financial crisis.
Eventually, Ryan relocated to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, where he taught business law and international law at the university level and established a U.S. business-based immigration law practice. There, he helped Vietnamese entrepreneurs establish U.S. companies and immigrate with their families, using business formation as a legal bridge to residency, capital, and opportunity.
Through all his international work and professional success, Ryan never lost sight of his original calling: to be a resource for “the young Ryans”—Black youth and others from underrepresented communities who deserve access to tools that build power, not just hustle.
Ryan came to understand a profound truth through his legal and immigration work: in the U.S., a business is a legal person—a status that grants access to rights, capital, and protections that even many human beings struggle to obtain. This concept of legal personhood—created through business incorporation—became a powerful metaphor for self-agency.
That insight became the foundation for IC Royalty, a curriculum and platform that teaches students how to treat themselves as their first business. Through personal brand leadership, intellectual property literacy, and entrepreneurship education, Ryan’s work gives students a new way to see themselves—not just as individuals, but as assets capable of generating wealth, equity, and influence.
He’s spent his life building bridges, and now he’s committed to helping the next generation of entrepreneurs build their own bridges, The DBA Way™.
