Her Background

Jessica Bellamy grew up in a multigenerational home in a poor and working-class community in Louisville, Kentucky. Unfortunately, however, she personally experienced houslessness due to skyrocketing rents. In addition, Bellamy also experienced indirect displacement from her hometown due to gentrification.

Despite these challenges, Bellamy graduated from Summa Cum Laude from the University of Louisville. She earned degrees in drawing (BFA), graphic design (BFA), pan African studies (BA), and a minor in communication.

As a result of her background, Bellamy uses her skills in information design, tenant organizing, and scholarship to help those in a similar situation that she used to be in. She strices to build structured tenant-lead campaigns and produce knowledge in solidarity with communities under threat of displacement, surveillance, and police violence.

Her Career

In her career, Jessica Bellamy mainly works alongside tenants and trains them in how they can investigate and build collective power around their community concerns. She currently does this through the business she co-founded, the Root Cause Research Center (RCRC). RCRC is a grassroots-led institution that collects data, creates data visuals, and trains impacted community members in research and data storytelling. Through this, Bellamy is able to support the creation of life-affirming housing systems and policies that center poor and working-class people and their needs.

She not only works within RCRC, though. Bellamy is also an organizer with the Louisville Tenants Union (LTU) and the Historically Black Neighborhood Assembly, which is a chapter within the Louisville Tenants Union. Both RCRC and LTU are a part of a national coalition of tenant-led organizations under the Homes Guarantee, a People's Action campaign Together, they aim to eradicate houslessness, de-commodify housing, and make housing a human right in the United States.

Finally, Bellamy also presents and gives workshops on information design and data equality in multiple countries, including the United States, Germany, and Canada. She also presents at conferences at universities such as Carnegie Mellon, UCLA, Vermont College of Fine Arts, ArtCenter, and Yale. Through these, she teaches many people on the importance of information design and data equality.

Her Designs

Jessica Bellamy began her design career with nonprofits and community groups to create compelling explainers that break down complex service and policy information. With the creation and growth of her business, however, Bellamy also now decolonized information design, learning experience design, research, and editorial animation in her work.

Currently, she is a Design Justice Advocate. This means Bellamy actively advocates for the dismantling of the privilege and power structures that use the design profession to maintain systems of injustice. She does this by designing for the disempowered, those who bear the brunt of injustice and need help the most.

In addition, she is a alumnus of the Adobe Creative Residency program, which supports community creativity through museum collaborations and the Community Fund. Bellamy uses this experience to create compelling motion infographics, data visuals, and data storytelling graphics.

Her Awards

Jessica Bellamy has been featured in Arianna Huffington's Thrive Global, Forbes, Communication Arts Magazine, The Great Discontent, Creativee Magazine, Creative Mornings, Slack, The Dieline, Rivision Path, and Adobe's Project 1324 in 2020.

New York Times'T Magazine named Bellamy one of "The 15 Creative Women for Our Time"

In 2021, Bellamy was named as one of Graphic Design USA's Responsible Designers to Watch.