Alumni Profile: CEO
“My business card is six-inches long,” jokes Jesse Schell. This comment comes after the Information Networking Institute (INI) alumnus has just recited his job title. Jesse is the Assistant Professor of the Practice of Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC).
Jesse Schell has been many things: a stand-up comedian, a professional juggler, a magician’s apprentice, and a circus artist, to name a few. But it was his time at the INI that propelled Jesse towards a successful career working for Walt Disney Imagineering, teaching at the ETC, and starting his own company, Schell Games.
After earning his B.S. in Computer Science from Rensselaer, and then his M.S. in Information Networking (MSIN) from the INI, Jesse returned to BellCore in 1994, where he had been working before he began his graduate studies. But within a year, Jesse’s creative aspirations drew him towards another opportunity.
“While I was at the INI, one of the things I focused on was networked virtual reality, because there was an opportunity to do that,” says Jesse. “Virtual reality was really something that had captured my imagination, and there was an opportunity to become a programmer at the Disney Virtual Reality Studio around 1995.”
At Disney, Jesse worked on creating new types of theme park experiences and online massively-multiplayer games. As the Creative Director at the Imagineering VR Studio, his projects included working on DisneyQuest and leading the design of Toontown Online.
Jesse’s time at Disney would indirectly lead him back to Carnegie Mellon. During this period, he met Randy Pausch, who was taking a sabbatical in Jesse’s lab. Professor Pausch went on to found the ETC, and in 2002, after working for Imagineering for seven years, Jesse joined the faculty at the ETC, where he currently teaches Building Virtual Worlds and Game Design.
Although his intention was only to teach, consulting work led Jesse to consider stepping back into industry. He had also begun to reconsider the need to part with all of his students. “One thing I started to realize was while I liked working with the students at the school, I wondered if I could find a way to continue working with some of these people,” says Jesse.
He found that opportunity in 2004 when he founded Schell Games, a multimedia and game design company. “I’ve been doing Schell Games for about four years now, and we now have about thirty-five people or so,” says Jesse. “It’s just really nice to be able to have a foot in both places – to be able to be in the school and to be in industry at the same time.”
Jesse Schell was included in the 2004 list of the world’s 100 Top Young Innovators by MIT’s Technology Review, and he was named one of Pittsburgh’s 40 Under 40 by Pittsburgh Magazine, a list of young professionals who make Pittsburgh a better place to live. Jesse is also the coordinator of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the International Game Developers Association. But with all of his success, he still credits the quality and flexibility of the INI’s program as a vital experience in his professional development. When asked what he would tell a prospective student, Jesse is cheerfully confident as always:
“The thing to understand about the INI is the opportunities it’s going to give you,” says the assistant professor. “Yes, you’re going to have world-class educational opportunities, you’re going to be able to take the greatest classes from the greatest instructors, and you’re going to be side-by-side, shoulder-to-shoulder with people who are going to go out and change the world. However, the main thing to understand is the freedom you’re going to have to make the program be whatever you want it to be. Almost anything you can think of, you can make it happen at the INI if you want to.”