Bob Jacobson

BOB JACOBSON is an innovation management consultant and customer experience designer practicing on the West Coast and in Scandinavia.

In the 1980s, Bob began his professional career as the principal telecommunications and information policy advisor to the California State Assembly. He wrote and helped to enact legislation to preserve universal telephone service and protect personal privacy in California. He coined the term, "electronic commerce." In the 1990s and 2000s, Bob co-founded a public R&D lab, was a professional futurist and strategic planner, and founded two high-tech software companies.

In 2003, Bob created ran the independent Dean Issues Forum for the Dean Campaign and later co-founded DemTech, a post-primary amalgamation of Democratic Presidential candidates' technology teams for the 2004 campaign.

In 2007, Bob became a founding member of the BH&L Group, the all-volunteer team of Expo veterans who responded to the State Department's 2006-7 RFP to create a US Pavilion for the Shanghai 2010 World Expo. In September 2007, BH&L Group was deemed the most qualified responder to the RFP and entered into negotiations with the State Department. However, in December 2007, the State Department aborted the RFP process and privately outsourced the pavilion project without public notice or review. Thus began Bob's accidental education in realpolitik and about public diplomacy for hire.

Bob earned a Ph.D. in Urban Planning at UCLA's Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning (GSAUP) and an M.A. in Communications Industry Management at the USC Annenberg School of Communications. He was a Fulbright Scholar studying the impact of then-new cellular telephony on transborder communities in the Arctic Nordic Circle.