A birder since his early teens, Bryan completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin, an M.Sc. in Primate Conservation from Oxford Brookes University, and was awarded an M.A. and Ph.D. in Physical (Biological) Anthropology from Tulane University where he studied the impact of cattle ranching on a community of primates in the central Amazon. Bryan bird-watched his way through primatology field work in Belize, Brazil, Costa Rica, and Peru before making the switch from monkeys to birds. Bryan joined ABC in 2018 after four years as both Director of the Community Conservation program at Bird City Wisconsin and Chief Scientist at Western Great Lakes Bird & Bat Observatory.