Robert Thompson
RJ Thompson, MFA is an award-winning marketing and graphic design professional.
Currently, he is a Teaching Associate Professor of Digital Narrative
and Interactive Design at the University of Pittsburgh. He was most recently the
Manager of Digital Strategy in Pitt Health Sciences. He previously served as Director
of Digital Marketing in the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business and College
of Business Administration at the University of Pittsburgh.
Before joining Pitt, he was a tenured Assistant Professor of Graphic + Interactive
Design in the Department of Art at Youngstown State University. Before Youngstown
State, Thompson taught at Carnegie Mellon University, La Roche University,
and Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. Continuing his career in education, he has
been an Adjunct Professor of Graphic & Interactive Design at Point Park University
since 2019 where he was responsible for writing and teaching the interactive design
curriculum. In 2020, he began teaching at the Community College of Allegheny County.
Outside of marketing, design, and teaching, he is also the Co-Principal
and Creative Strategist for +Public, a Pennsylvania-based social enterprise that
focuses on cultivating community and economic development impact through the creation
of branded communication platforms, creative place-making, and storytelling initiatives
for communities-in-revival.
Throughout his career, Thompson has received many accolades for his creative
works: In 2015, he was one of several recipients of the National Endowment for
the Arts “Our Town” grant, valued at $100,000, for the INPLACE (“Innovative Plan
for Leveraging Arts & Community Engagement”) project. In 2017, Thompson received
a “Best of Marketing Award” from the Ohio Economic Development Association for
his efforts in rebranding the City of Youngstown, Ohio. In 2018, he was
accepted into the prestigious Cohort 2 of the National Arts Marketing Project,
a program supported by Americans for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the
Arts. In 2019, he also received a scholarship to join the National Arts
Strategies Executive Program in Arts & Culture Strategy through the School
of Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2019, he was honored
with the Ohio Governors Award in the Arts in Community Development, the state of
Ohio’s highest recognition in the arts sector.
Thompson is President-Emeritus of AMA Pittsburgh and current President of
AIGA Pittsburgh.
LinkedIn: RJ Thompson, MFA, SMS, CDMP