John E. Arnold, Jr. is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Educational Services of America, Inc., with principal offices located at 104 North Seven Oaks Drive, Knoxville, TN 37922. He also serves as the Chairman of the Board of Directors for ESA.

Prior to joining Edsouth and ESA on a full-time basis, Mr. Arnold was a partner at Robertson, Ingram & Overbey in Knoxville, Tennessee, and his practice was concentrated primarily in the areas of municipal and structured finance, financial and regulatory matters for commercial banks, bankruptcy, factoring, loan workouts, and tax issues related to municipal and structured finance. He has served as bond counsel, issuer's counsel and underwriter's counsel on approximately $14 billion of structured finance transactions. He structured the first allocation and issuance of tax-exempt debt by an out-of-state issuer in the United States. He also designed and achieved bank holding company status for the first non-profit corporation applicant in the United States.
 
Mr. Arnold obtained his undergraduate degree in finance from the University of Tennessee and his law degree from the University of Memphis. He is also a graduate of the Graduate School of Banking held at the University of Colorado.