Experience before Ivy

From India to Iowa to the Middle East, this Ivy professor pauses briefly to gather intelligence for the benefit of national security

As seen in the fall 2024 Ivy magazine.

Ryan Bhattacharyya (Bought-ah-cherry-ah) moved from his home in India to Iowa when he was 18 years old in order to attend college. There was nothing unusual about his academic experience. He earned a bachelor’s, an MBA, and a PhD. His areas of specialization are in management, finance, and strategy.

After earning his MBA, he worked for Principal Financial in Des Moines, Iowa, in the area of investment management. After three years, he started his own wealth management firm in 2008, which he has grown to include 15 full-time employees who work with clients across the country.

With all of his experience and success, there’s one important part of his life that you won’t see on his résumé — secretly hiding in the years between earning his bachelor’s degree and his MBA — and it’s for a good reason.

“That part of my life was classified until 2013, well, part of it has been declassified anyway,” he said.

Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he was recruited to gather intelligence that would hopefully lead to the capture of the terrorists responsible. When describing it today, he remains thoughtful when choosing his words.

“I worked with an independent contractor who was contracted with intelligence agencies,” he said. “My role involved being overseas in a deeply undercover position, working to gather information that analysts could analyze so they could essentially pursue and find the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 attacks. It was a two-and-a-half year assignment. I chose not to renew it when I returned. Regardless of how great the money was, if I am dead, I can’t spend the money,” he said. “So, I chose to come back to Des Moines to enjoy my life. I liked the peace and quiet.”

Going from finance to spy

Bhattacharyya was part of a team of four who operated deeply undercover in the Middle East. “It’s basically a lawless area where the government doesn’t have much control,” he said.

“Our job involved talking to local people in our undercover roles as students in a religious institution,” he said. Information was shared and passed along to analysts.

“Those were interesting, valuable years where I learned a lot about human nature and a lot about negotiations. I learned a lot about talking with people in ways that you can get the information you need without raising their suspicions while respecting their humanity in the process.”

That explains the two-year gap when he was away from a career in finance.

How he was selected is an unusual story.

“It was a career recruitment event from the University of Iowa that turned out to be national security related recruitment. They were looking for people who looked like me, were American citizens, could pass a very high-level security clearance, and very importantly, could speak a very specific language with native fluency.”

Knowing the language, which he cannot divulge due to the need to protect sources and methods, was essential given their cover story.

At the time, Bhattacharyya was 32 and single. “I was young. When they offered me a tax-free amount of money for two-and-a-half years, it all sounded really good,” he said.

After background checks and three months of training, the team was on its way to a remote location in the Middle East.

Danger lurked around every corner

While on this sensitive assignment, which he couldn’t even tell his family about, Bhattacharyya experienced intense levels of stress on a daily basis. Two months into the assignment, he wanted out but knew he signed a contract.

“It’s not like there was a bus available to come take me home. I couldn’t make a phone call and say I changed my mind,” he said.

“The biggest fear was that somebody would discover our true identities. That would put us in danger,” he said. “The scary part was, what if they did discover our true identities, but they did not let us know that, and we kept going on and on, without knowing they knew the truth? It required a very high level of constant vigilance and self-awareness, environmental awareness.”

His work gathering intelligence made Bhattacharyya feel he was making a difference. “It involved the eventual capture of many people who were directly or indirectly involved in the 9/11 attacks on our country,” he said.

The work his team was doing was always done for intelligence agencies.

“We looked at it from a national security standpoint. We were doing something to benefit the country. This is my adopted country. I’m doing something to benefit the country where I became a citizen in 2000 and where I made a home.”

— Ryan Bhattacharyya

“But they did not want to put their own people in there because they would not have plausible deniability,” Bhattacharyya said. “So, they had multiple contractors who hired people like us and put us in there, so in the event something went wrong, there wasn’t a direct line of responsibility.”

The stakes were high. Two-and-a-half years was enough.

With the option to sign up for three more years, he weighed the consequences.

“No matter how good the compensation package, and it was an attractive compensation package, it was risky. The money appealed to me at that time. But after I reflected on it, I liked to be in Des Moines. I liked to be able to go to restaurants that I liked, eat the food I liked, and see my friends. I’m perfectly happy with that slow pace of life.”

Besides the lucrative compensation, Bhattacharyya felt the weight of the assignment.

“We looked at it from a national security standpoint. We were doing something to benefit the country. This is my adopted country. I’m doing something to benefit the country where I became a citizen in 2000 and where I made a home.”

When he learned this was being partially declassified, his next move was to tell his wife and children.

“I shared with them the portions I could,” he said. “My wife, Lanesa, was surprised but thankful that I came back in one piece. She did not know me then. I explained it to our children, Macie (now 23), Preston (now 16), in age-appropriate ways. Our youngest child, Kumar, is 5 and he doesn’t know any of this because he is too young to process this information.”

Connecting experiences in the classroom

In 2018, he answered an ad from the Ivy College of Business to teach a management class. The need for an experienced entrepreneur led to a more frequent teaching position, and Bhattacharyya became full-time in 2019. What he likes most about teaching is connecting his experiences as an entrepreneur and expert in conflict resolution with the classroom experience.

He brings real-time business topics into the classroom and connects them to what they are learning in the course. For example, just as the Russian invasion of Ukraine was about to happen in the spring of 2022, he was prepping the students in his negotiation class on how NATO was trying to negotiate with Russia, not to invade.

“That’s when we were learning in the class how you negotiate with liars, with people who are being deceptive,” he said. After the invasion happened, they circled back to review what happened. “This is why negotiating with liars is ineffective.”

It was especially meaningful that his class included a couple of students from Russia and Ukraine who were able to discuss their perspectives, adding additional value to the conversations.

In his classes, they’ve also discussed the Elon Musk purchase of Twitter, the lack of strategy in the purchase, and the financial plan to make the purchase.

“What I like to do is bring in real-life examples, show what’s going on out there so they can connect the dots between what’s going on out there with the theoretical things they are learning in the classroom, in addition to my past experiences with business and entrepreneurship.”

November 19, 2024