EAGLE — Eagle County Commissioner Jill Ryan has been tapped by newly-elected Gov. Jared Polis to serve as executive director for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Ryan is a two-term Eagle County Commissioner and a public health professional with more than two decades of experience in the field.

Ryan was first elected Eagle County Commissioner in 2012 and re-elected in 2016. Ryan is the former director of both health planning and the Office of Health Disparities at the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. She managed Eagle County’s Public Health Agency from 2004-2009, before starting her own consulting firm.

According to her biography on the Eagle County website, Ryan is currently the vice-chair of the state’s Intermountain Transportation Planning Region and vice-chair of the Interstate 70 Coalition Board. She is also a governor’s appointee to the Colorado Board of Health and is the board’s vice president.

She is the current President of Colorado Communities for Climate Action.

Polis Priorities

Even before her appointment, Ryan was working with Polis on health care issues. She co-chaired the governor-elect’s transition team’s Health and Human Services Committee.

In his inaugural speech Tuesday, Polis declared affordable health care is one of his priorities.

“We get to work building a health care system that ensures families don’t have to choose between losing their homes and losing their healthcare,” Polis said.

Ryan isn’t the only High Country elected official who will join Polis’ team. Summit County Commissioner and former state representative Dan Gibbs has been named Executive Director of the Department of Natural Resources.

Gibbs has been a Summit County commissioner since 2010. Prior to his tenure as a commissioner, Dan represented Summit County in the Colorado House of Representatives and in the State Senate.

Ryan has been an Eagle County resident since 1994 and she is a Colorado native who grew up on the Front Range. She graduated from the University of Colorado, where she earned a master’s degree in public health. She and her husband Taylor “Ty” Ryan are the parents of a young son and they reside in Edwards.