Forty Under 40: Jessica Hester

Jessica Hester wanted to tilt the dial toward the creative at her architecture firm, so she assembled a team of 12 professionals with overlapping creative disciplines focusing on art, architecture and research.

“Our clients are increasingly diverse, and our work progressively more complex and interesting,” Hester said of Verdant Studio, which she founded in 2016. “It’s all-consuming, but it’s my greatest passion.”

Hester is an Arkansas native and earned an architecture degree from the University of Oklahoma and a master’s degree in architectural design and research from the University of Michigan.

Verdant is her second firm. After graduate school, she co-founded a firm in Georgia. She completed varied projects, including the largest tennis complex in North America and three theater/performance hall spaces.

Her interest grew in large-scale urban design, so she sold her stake in that business to work for the University of Arkansas’ Community Design Center. Her year there was a “fast and furious” education, she said, culminating with launching Verdant Studio.

The year 2020 was pivotal. Hester acquired and folded in another firm and made three key hires: sculpture artist Dayton Castleman as director of visual thinking (the two helped co-found the Rogers Experimental House), Natasha Brand as research lead, and Chris McCray as director of architecture.

“We do a ton of research to do good design — research about the context, the client, their needs,” Hester said.

She fosters a supportive and kind work environment. The firm’s offices are downtown in the historic Rogers Milk Plant Building.

“We tend to be workaholics, so we really advocate for time off,” she said. “My biggest soapbox is affordable housing. We’re dedicated as a firm to pro bono work.”