Ryan Dominguez’s path to becoming ESP USA’s shop manager, master painter, product/color developer, and, now, Director of USA Manufacturing Operations, was cast by fate. It was his last year of high school, and he knew he wanted to do something with art as a career. He floated the idea of becoming an animator, but everyone kept telling him there was no money in art. Little by little, he began feeling lost. “I didn’t really know where I wanted to go in life,” Dominguez tells PG. “One day I was walking home through the alleyway where my friends and I used to do alleyway things. In the gutter there was this brochure for Guitar Craft Academy, and I read through it and thought, ‘That’s a pretty cool way to blend art and music.’”