About Jim
Jim is an Investor, Active Board Member and CEO Coach with a passion for people and business. He has a track record of driving results; developing winning strategies, growing revenue, optimizing profits, and guiding companies to meaningful and transformational liquidity events… all while having fun.
Leveraging his 25+ years of experience as a CEO, Jim today serves as the type of confidant and trusted advisor he now wishes he had during his years as a CEO. Not just a temporary advisor or issue specific consultant, but a true partner who is invested in the business, who digs in and really gets to know the vision of the Founder/CEO.
His focus is to help develop and implement strategies that drive exceptional revenue and profit growth using a proven set of tools and techniques, all while keeping a keen eye on how each business delivers value to its customers, employees, shareholders and society at large, as well as how all of these things interact with one’s personal life.
Both during his time as a full time CEO and since retiring in 2016, Jim has served and continues to serve as a Board Member & Advisor to CEO’s at more than a dozen companies. Current for profit Boards include Envirowaste Services Group, Advanced Powering Systems, MantleMount, Getix Health, Local Media San Diego, Transit Auto & Creative Multicare. Current not for profit Boards include: Forte for Children, The Coral Reef Alliance, and The Wyland Foundation. Past Boards included Sound United, JonDon, Ellery Homestyles, Brown Jordan, Twinstar Home, Clarion, Escort Radar, Aerobed and McIntosh Laboratories.
Career
During his tenure as CEO of DEI Holdings, Inc. from 2000 to 2016, Jim consistently demonstrated his ability to recognize opportunity to create hundreds of millions of dollars of shareholder value. For example, he lead the acquisitions of both Definitive Technology in 2004 and Polk Audio and 2006 turning DEI into the #1 market share position in the the Home Theater Speaker Category in the US. He also created an exclusive agreement to provide all Sirius and XM satellite radios to the US aftermarket that resulted in over $500MM of sales in 4 years and a joint venture in telematics that delivered 1MM in vehicle devices and a 10x+ investor return.
In his CEO role, Jim drove success by focusing on strong, lean teams & key strategic partnerships with customers and suppliers around the world, and by leveraging the many leadership skills he developed over his 40 years as a Senior Executive. Working with private equity partners Charlesbank, Trivest and investment banks Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and others, he raised over $1 billion of debt & equity in multiple rounds, including a $150MM IPO on the NASDAQ, concluded multiple dividend recapitalizations and a successful $305MM “go private” transaction, ultimately returning 3.5x+ to DEI’s original private equity partners. He completed and integrated 8 acquisitions at DEI ranging in size from $10 million to $136 million. After his retirement, the team Jim put in place acquired D&M Holdings in 2018, the parent to Denon, Marantz & Boston Acoustics, and Bowers & Wilkins (B&W) in 2020, more than doubling the size of the Company.
Earlier in his career, Jim served as the CEO of Clarion Corporation of America, where he had full P&L responsibility for the $560 million, 4500 employee Western Hemisphere headquarters of a $1.8 Billion Japanese public Company. Prior to joining Clarion, Jim served as SVP of Sales and Marketing Altec Lansing.
Jim earned his Bachelor and Master degrees in Business Administration from the Pennsylvania State University, where he has been honored to serve as the graduation speaker for the University’s Executive MBA Program. He has also served as a guest lecturer at Stanford, the University of California and other Universities, and as the graduation speaker for the Penn State Greater Allegheny (Pittsburgh) Campus.
Committed to “paying it forward,” Jim is the Founder and Chairman of the Forte for Children Charitable Foundation, which has raised over $8.5 million to help disadvantaged children, and is active on a number of charitable organization boards. He enjoys travel with his wife Megan, is an avid scuba diver, and has visited over 80 countries.