Jacob Albee is a native of South Strafford, Vermont. He attended The University of Vermont, where he completed a double-degree in Fine Art and Wildlife Biology in 1999. During this time, he spent a summer semester as a teaching assistant in the jewelry studio at Dartmouth College in 1996, as well as a semester studying wildlife management in Kenya and a summer working for the Peregrine Fund in the mountains of Ethiopia in 1998. The plan was to become an ornithologist, but a summer job making and selling designer jewelry changed a hobby into a career.