Bio

Biography

Earl W. Jessee was born at Enloe Hospital in Chico, California, on October 31, 1978. Stemming from a 6 generation Butte County history, Earl has succeeded as an entrepreneur and businessman, becoming a partner of LearningChange, LLC in 2002, a professional and creative services firm located in Downtown Chico.

LearningChange maintains an international client base, specializing in communication design and organizational consulting for business, government, and non-profit organizations. At LearningChange, Earl is responsible for project management and design consultancy. He oversees a production staff of designers, programmers, copy writers and editors, and mentors several interns per semester from CSU, Chico and Chico High School.

In 2005, Earl joined the faculty of the Department of Communication Design at California State University, Chico, following in the footsteps of his professional mentors, Phil Quinn and Fred Condo, with whom he has studied and collaborated for many years. His goal as a faculty member is to bring real-world business experience into the classroom to enrichen the learning experience of students seeking careers in web design and Internet communications.

Earl is committed to professional and technological standards in his work, including semantic XHTML construction, accessibility, usability, and user-oriented design. While maintaining rigorous standards, Earl revels in the opportunity to challenge his own design aesthetics, constantly seeking new areas of visual exploration and inventiveness. His goal is to inspire his fellow designers to sit back and say “wow, how’d he build that?” with each project he completes.

Earl is an active member of the community that he grew up in and loves. He currently servces as vice president of the board of directors for the Downtown Chico Business Association, is a founding board member of the Butte Pioneers Civic Venture Capital Fund, is a mentor with the Chico High School ACT Mentor Program (his alma mater), and donates his evening hours to local economic, arts, and cultural organizations. Earl graduated from California State Univeristy, Chico in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Visual Communiation, Graphic Design. Though he worked as a web designer all through his college years, Earl’s professional career began in Sausalito, California, where he went to work for a Quinn Interactive, Inc., a graphic and web design firm operated by alumni and former professor Philip Quinn. His time in the San Francisco Bay Area was short-lived. With the economic downturn of late 2001, Earl soon found himself unemployed and relatively prospectless in a sea of dot- com fallouts. He returned to his hometown and begin working as a freelalnce designer, tapping into his life-long roots in Chico—which he maintains reach far down into the aquifer.

In late 2001, Earl ran into Jon Knolle, a friend and colleague from CSU, Chico’s student newspaper, The Orion, and soon the two were collaborating in their current enterprise, LearningChange, and team teaching courses in web design and project management at CSU, Chico.

As a professional and “old timer” in the web design industry, Earl has served clients including: The Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts, and Sciences, Business 2.0 Magazine, Atomz Corporation, Tyson, SaraLee Foodservice, Butte County, State of California, Outback Steakhouse International Restaurants, and of course, California State University, Chico.

History

Member for

2 years 8 weeks