Born with a silver–plated spoon in his mouth in Newburgh, New York, Robert Petro grew up in the school of the medium to soft knocks. At 10 years of age, he boarded a Lufthansa flight with his family and moved to Germany, where Robert would spend the next four years of his life. It was in Heidelberg that he first became awesome.

When all the Europe stuff was over, the Petros moved back to the United States. More specifically, the family moved back to the South … Raleigh, North Carolina. High school passed with the expected accolades: “Most likely to be awesome,” “Least likely to not be awesome,” etc. In college, Robert made a choice to study religion and philosophy. Strangely, when college was over, no company in the United States needed a philosopher on staff. He went back to school, this time to North Carolina State University for a Master of Arts in Communication. With a Communication degree, Robert was ready to hone some other skill that he didn’t go to school for.

During his college years, Robert had been in some killer bands and when they needed any promotional materials, he was their man. Design, both graphic and Web, became a part of his life in those years; now, it was going to become his life. Over the course of six or seven years, with lots of hard work and awesomeness, Robert learned to design. He also spent some time learning the codes that the computer used to make the design “go”.

After owning a business (and seeing it fail because of playing too many video games), working as a designer for a small startup and becoming a creative director at a well–respected Web agency, Robert has hit the motherload. Having moved to the big city with his super hot wife, Katie, and above average children, Emory and Elizabeth, the next chapter of the story is just getting started. He’s been heard saying, “Working as a designer at Arc90 is the best thing ever.”

At Arc, Robert works mostly as a designer. He spends most of his day in Photoshop, enjoying pushing pixels for some great projects. From time to time, you’ll catch him writing some code but don’t tell the bosses!