In just one year as vice president and director of athletics, Ryan Alpert has led Georgia Tech athletics to unprecedented success.
A seasoned collegiate athletics executive and one of the nation’s most respected leaders in revenue generation and athletics operations, Alpert was named the 11th athletics director in Georgia Tech history on July 8, 2025.
The Yellow Jackets’ most notable on-field achievements in their first year under Alpert’s leadership included:
Alpert put his stamp on Georgia Tech athletics in his first year by hiring championship coaches to lead two of the school’s most prestigious and tradition-laden programs. In March 2026, Alpert hired Scott Cross, the winner of seven conference championships and 350 games at Troy and Texas-Arlington, as Tech’s men’s basketball head coach. In May 2026, Alpert selected Ryan Hybl, who won the 2017 national title at Oklahoma and led the Sooners to 15-consecutive NCAA finals berths, to carry on the legacy and tradition of Georgia Tech golf. He also extended the contracts of two of the nation’s most successful young head coaches, Brent Key (football) and James Ramsey (baseball).
Academically, Georgia Tech athletics continues to excel under Alpert, including a 94% NCAA Graduation Success Rate (well above the national average of 90%), 14-of-15 programs surpassing or equaling their previous year’s NCAA Academic Progress Rate scores and every program having a 3.0 team grade point average or better during the fall 2025 semester, a first in Tech athletics history.
While the Jackets have excelled on the field and in the classroom under Alpert’s leadership, perhaps his biggest impact has come in revenue generation and fan experience. In Alpert’s first year at the helm, Georgia Tech athletics increased total revenue by 12%. Substantial growth in several areas led to the record revenue:
Georgia Tech also set several attendance records in Alpert’s first year at the helm, highlighted by surpassing an ambitious goal of 50 sellout events for the year, finishing the year with 57. The 57 sellouts included selling out the final two football games of the season at Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field (marking the first time that the Yellow Jackets had multiple football sellouts in a year since 2015), 16 baseball sellouts (including nine in the regular season, more than quadrupling the previous record of two), 15 volleyball sellouts (including all 14 matches at O’Keefe Gymnasium) and 14 softball sellouts, which led to Tech being just one of three ACC programs that ranked in the top 10 in the conference in football, volleyball, baseball, softball and women’s basketball attendance in 2025-26.
The 57 sellouts also included three sold-out concerts at Bobby Dodd Stadium – Chris Brown’s Breezy Bowl XX Tour and two nights of Bruno Mars: The Romantic Tour. Part of Alpert’s strategy to expand Tech athletics’ revenue streams, the three concerts were the most ever held at Bobby Dodd Stadium in a single year and resulted in a multi-million-dollar revenue lift.
In Alpert’s first year at the helm, Georgia Tech athletics also set records for student engagement, selling out of student football season tickets (7,000 – surpassing the previous record of 5,993) and seeing 12,500 students attend the Yellow Jackets’ victory over No. 12-ranked Clemson at Bobby Dodd Stadium, which was the highest single-game student attendance in Tech football history.
Alpert has also overseen two significant capital milestones as Georgia Tech’s director of athletics – the opening of the $90 million Thomas A. Fanning Student-Athlete Performance Center and the completion of the design for Tech’s upcoming $70 million Bobby Dodd Stadium renovation.
Alpert came to Georgia Tech with nearly two decades of leadership experience at the Power Four level and beyond, including serving as senior deputy athletics director and chief revenue officer at the University of Tennessee for four years (2021-25).
At Tennessee, Alpert played a central role in the Volunteers’ rise to national prominence across multiple sports. He helped lead the department to its highest-ever finish in the Learfield Directors’ Cup and to three consecutive SEC All-Sports Championships. As a senior executive, he oversaw business and finance, development, marketing, ticketing, capital projects, sponsorships and more — collectively helping Tennessee athletics increase its annual revenue by over $100 million from 2022-25. In the 2024 fiscal year alone, Tennessee athletics generated a record $228 million in operating revenue and raised nearly $140 million through the Tennessee Fund.
He also served as Tennessee’s lead on the Neyland Entertainment District, a transformative public-private partnership to revitalize Knoxville’s riverfront and enhance the football gameday experience around UT’s Neyland Stadium.
Alpert’s previous leadership roles also included serving as deputy athletic director at the University of Missouri and Florida Atlantic University, where he helped engineer record-setting fundraising results and led strategic initiatives across external operations. He also served in development and leadership positions at Memphis, where he played a key role in securing some of the largest gifts in the school’s athletics history.
His professional experience began with internships at the University of Miami (Fla.) and his alma mater, the University of South Carolina.
Originally from Columbia, S.C., Alpert holds a bachelor’s degree from South Carolina (graduating cum laude) and a master’s degree from Memphis.
He and his wife, Rebecca, have two daughters, Mary Margaret and Annie.
