Julio Pompa Frizza: Designing Career Paths

<figure id="attachment_39362" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-39362" style="width: 279px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="http://laprensa-sandiego.org/featured/julio-pompa-frizza-disenando-el-e…; rel="attachment wp-att-39362"><img loading="lazy" src="http://laprensa-sandiego.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/julio-Copy-279x…; alt="" width="279" height="300" class="size-medium wp-image-39362" srcset="https://dev-laprensa.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/julio-C… 279w, https://dev-laprensa.pantheonsite.io/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/julio-C… 854w" sizes="(max-width: 279px) 100vw, 279px"></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-39362" class="wp-caption-text">Julio Pompa Frizza</figcaption></figure>
From a young age, Julio Pompa Frizza was always curious computers and had an active interest in art. Today, as Platt College’s Director of Education, Julio helps students reach their career goals in the field of digital art and design.
Julio was born and raised in Asuncion, Paraguay, where he had a childhood which he still has fond memories of. During this time. Julio completed his studies from elementary school through high school in Paraguay, earning high school diplomas in his home country and the United States as an exchange student.
After high school, Julio began working at a Coca Cola Company-licensed bottling plant while working on his bachelor’s degree in accounting and, later on, his master’s in business administration.
“At the bottling plant, I worked in production, accounting, human resources, and also sales”, Julio remembered. “I did that for 10 years.”
Despite being involved in his job and studies, Julio’s creative impulses never slowed down. While working at the bottling plant, he also had access to another interest of his, computers.
“I always had a fascination with computers,” Julio explained. “Since I was young, I would do my drawings and then scan them to transform my art digitally. While working at Coca-Cola, I had access to computers and would use them on my free time or after hours for to work on my art.”
Eventually, Julio chose to pursue his passion of creating art as a career.
“I always had a creative side. I always liked art as a hobby but in my country art was really just art with no purpose it was just paintings and drawings,” Julio told La Prensa San Diego.
During a trip to the United States, Julio wound up in San Diego, where he looked for opportunities to enroll in classes with the intention of entering an art program.
“I wanted to study art and computers, but I didn’t want to do graphic design,” Julio said. “I found Platt College which is where I studied and completed their multimedia and design diploma program.”
“I loved it at Platt. I thought having classes with computers was the most amazing thing, especially coming from Paraguay where computers were so expensive and rare,” Julio recalled. “It was so cool to have a class with a computer; I loved it.”
However, he didn’t stop there. Julio still had his dream of attending art school. So he enrolled at Mesa College and worked his way up to an art program at UCSD, where he received a bachelor’s in art. After graduating from UCSD, Julio went on to work as a freelance graphic designer and artist. 
 Julio’s career in design took off through his work in designing book covers, interiors, websites, printed material, advertising, logos and branding, and by working in collaboration with Monkey C Media, a renowned design local studio based out of South Park. 
Julio has also worked with Joyce Cutler-Shaw, whose large-scale public art installations are featured all over San Diego and the United States.
As time went on and Julio looked for a change in career focus, Julio found a job at Platt College, returning to where his interests of art and computers evolved into a career.
“ I applied to teach at Platt but I later realized that they were looking for an actual instructor and not just a tutor,” said Julio. “At the beginning, instruction was something that I didn’t want to do but I realized that I knew something that the students wanted to know; I then realized I can share something to others.”
After teaching for six years, Julio was recently named Platt College’s Director of Education. And although his new charge will demand a lot from him, he does not intend to stop teaching.
“I will continue teaching because I don’t want to lose that connection,” he said. “Being in the classroom helps me gain a better understanding of what students need to succeed and what faculty need to support them,” Julio stated.
“Of all of the schools I’ve been to, Platt College is the one I’ve gotten the most from,” Julio expressed in a press release emitted by Platt College to announce their new Director of Education. “Platt College is a career college intensely focused on getting students ready to succeed as commercial artists,”
When asked to reflect on his road to leading the academic and career programs at his former school, Julio seemed pleased at the serendipity of it all.
“It has been a fascinating journey and it is not something I planned. My path just took a natural course and I think it’s really cool that I came back to Platt College,” Julio closed.