Joseph Ryan Laia was born in Los Alamos, New Mexico, to a PhD scientist and an artist. The environment fused together intellect, desolation, art, history and culture. His exposure to Spanish and indigenous culture eventually manifested itself in his work, both on the screen and off. 

Ryan obtained a degree in Latin American History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He combined his passion for history and cinema, writing his thesis on a series of films and a novella by Sergio Giral, making the correlation that the narratives regarding slavery in Cuba were reflecting race relations within post-revolutionary Cuba. 

While pursuing his degree, Ryan spent his summers studying at New York University, University of Southern California and San Francisco School of Digital Filmmaking building a core curriculum of film classes, focusing on screenwriting, cinematography and 16mm filmmaking.

At the London Film School Ryan collaborated on over a dozen short films.