“The reason why I was drawn to games so much, it was the art, the experience, the colors,” says Jean Amarante. But in spite of his love for games, the Full Sail graduate saw a more lucrative and self-directed career path in applying his skills in art, design, and coding to a career in web development.

“I actually started coding on my own,” shares Jean. “Right before I applied to Full Sail, I was like, ‘You know what? I should probably do Web [Development] because I already do game dev on my own.” With that, Jean enrolled in Full Sail’s Web Development bachelor’s program.

“The best thing about Full Sail [was] giving the students a chance to be able to work on their own projects instead of being tested. I was doing civil engineering and I hated that at the end of the semester we had to do really big exams. But with Full Sail, it was all project-based mostly, and setting your own timescales, actually how to be your own freelancer, how to manage your time and the budget.”

With an extensive portfolio in web design and development with tech startups in Orlando and the Caribbean, Jean has recently joined the team at Blink Esports as the Chief Technical Officer. Working with brands including the NBA, Red Bull, Samsung, and Capcom, the Dominican Republic-based company also represents a roster of all-star players, including two-time Capcom Cup Champion MenaRD, under its professional esports organization, Bandits Gaming.

In Jean’s day-to-day work, he brands, develops, and designs for a variety of web properties under the Blink umbrella including Copa Rica Esports, the Dominican Republic’s largest inter-collegiate esports tournament. “We do the biggest esports events here in the Caribbean, hands down,” says Jean. “We're just pushing what's possible with all this stuff, and it's all being done here in the DR.”

While working in the trenches alongside a small team at a tech startup poses its challenges, Jean couldn’t be happier to be working with the team at Blink. “At the end of the day, it's all paid off, I’m working. Everyone who is a really good developer in this country, they just go over to the US and Canada or Europe to get work. There's just no opportunities here. Just the fact that I'm able to come back here and we're creating opportunities here, it's a really big thing,” says the grad.

Jean credits much of his success with Blink and Bandits to what he learned about himself while in school, saying, “It made me the person I am right now. Working on the branding for Blink and Bandits and all of the other companies I work for, I would've never found that out about myself if I had never been at Full Sail, like, ‘Oh, I really do like design.’”