Jim Eckelberger and Conrad Prusak have known each other for more than 15 years. Jim has accumulated more than 45 years of managerial and executive experience in commercial and governmental assignments. In his career as a military leader and then a business manager, he has built a reputation as a change agent, problem solver, strategic planner, and most recently as a mentor and teacher. Personally, Jim is passionate and principled about the responsibility of leaders.

In the context of helping others, Jim has worked recently with an international consulting firm assisting a worldwide consumer products company deal with meeting Wall Street expectations and served as a mentor to the CEO of a regional health care organization working to markedly cut costs and achieve economic viability. He is also engaged as an expert with the Institute for Defense Analysis, working on homeland defense and the response to catastrophic situations.

He has been a Vice President in five companies in divergent industries, ranging in size from one to $37 billion dollars, and the CEO of a new venture company. Jim currently serves on several Boards and on a Flag Officer Advisory team. He is chairman of the Board of Directors for the Southwest Power Pool, the electrical transmission provider designated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for an eight state region in the southern Midwest.

Jim transitioned to management in business from a very successful career as an officer in the U. S. Navy. He was Supply Officer of a destroyer and an aircraft carrier. He was a commander in Vietnam and was the officer in charge of material support for all Navy and Marine Corps aircraft in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. He left the Navy as a two star admiral, having worked in capacities equivalent to CIO, CFO, COO and CEO of military units with worldwide impact and tens of thousands of people and billions of dollars in budgets. Jim's leadership, his efforts to teach others to think differently, resulted in billions of dollars of savings and improved customer support, and earned him the highest peacetime awards of both the Defense and Navy Departments.

Jim is a graduate of Northwestern University with a BS in Business and holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School. He is also a graduate of the Capstone course for Military Flag Officers at the National Defense University. Jim lives with his wife in Dallas, Texas.