Creative Ape Studios was officially founded in 2015 by Joe Ryan in the beautiful city of Minneapolis, MN. With roots in the Arts District of North East Minneapolis, Creative Ape Studios has been developing code ever since.

Our focus is twofold: Facilitating art through code, and helping to build a better community.

If you have an idea for how we can do so, or would like to partner with us on a project, reach out to us and lets chat! We are always open to new ideas, new sources of creativity, and new ways of bringing people together.

Joe Ryan is the owner and lead developer at Creative Ape Studios. Born and raised in Orono, MN, he attended The Blake School for elementary and middle school and Benilde St. Margaret's School for high school. He graduated in 2004. He should have graduated from the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities campus in 2008 but enlisted in the United States Marine Corps instead. While enlisted, he earned his AA degree in Afghan Studies and Pashto Language, served as a Cryptological Linguist at 2nd Radio Bn, and deployed to Afghanistan twice. There he served as a Pashto linguist, analyst, and team leader for various SIGINT Teams and was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal for "successfully leading the planning, coordination, and delivery of timely and actionable signals intelligence support." Joe finished his enlistment contract as a Sergeant and returned to the U of MN to finish his degree: a BS in Computer Science. After Graduation he spent time as an IT Project Manager working at a Fortune 500 Medical Device Company, but soon realized that the corporate life was not for him. A few months after his contract with them ended he founded Creative Ape Studios and has been happily coding away ever since.

He can be reached at joe.ryan@creativeapestudios.com