John B. Jamison

John B. Jamison was born in Beardstown, Illinois, the elder of two children. While in college, he began his career as a pastor, which he continued for over twenty years before going back to school to begin a new career in higher education. “As a pastor,” John explains, “I spent most of my time helping people learn to cope with major changes in their lives. I found myself doing exactly the same thing with faculty and staff who were trying to deal with the huge changes taking place in education because of technology, games and other things. In both situations, I found that stories were a great tool.”

After several years of helping lead changes in education and corporate training, John and his wife, Pat, created their own company they called ImagiLearning. By creating learning activities that felt like good stories, John’s TranceFormational Learning® design model continues to demonstrate his use of story to have an impact. John says, “When an activity draws the learner in like a good game or story does, good things happen and the usual distractions disappear.” John completed his PhD with a dissertation exploring the use of 3D virtual environments to create meaningful story-driven experiences for education.

John grew-up in a family of riverboat captains, railroaders, fishermen, painters, photographers and writers, so storytelling is in his genes. Because of that, while busy with his careers, John also had several books published containing collections of stories; some faith-based and some academic. “Whatever I do, it always seems to come down to the idea of wanting to create just good stories.” John continues to follow that goal today as he focuses more on his writing, celebrating this year’s release of his first full novel: Disruption.

John’s writing continues to include his faith-based and non-fiction work, which he publishes as John B. Jamison. He publishes his fiction pieces under the name J. B. Jamison, and publishes his books for young readers and listeners as Pops Jamison.

John and his wife Pat live in the country near New Berlin, Illinois, just down the road from the farm home of their daughter and son-in-law and two grand children.