Jim Shea recently retired after a four-decade career, first as a lobbyist in Washington, DC, and later in higher education, working at the University of California, San Diego, Dartmouth College, and the University of Texas at Arlington. Jim’s time in higher education focused on new and emerging science research initiatives that could attract outside partners and resources. Working with the UC San Diego Center for Research in Computing and the Arts, for example, Jim secured a cash and equipment gift worth $300,000 that enabled the launch of a new in motion capture lab, as well as a cash and intellectual property gift that launched a major new initiative in virtual reality.

In between campuses, Jim served in foundation and corporate partnering at the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges in Washington, DC, where he built relationships with transformational companies at the leading edge of technological change in higher ed. He oversaw the development and funding of a $1 million grant from the Kresge Foundation to provide business consulting services to four HBCUs from a then-new AGB subsidiary, AGB Consulting.

Jim received his BA from Vassar College, where he double-majored in French and Italian. His first job out of college was as a paralegal on the Polaroid v. Kodak instant camera case, where he wrote digests of depositions on the thirteen chemical and mechanical patents under dispute in the case. He considers this early translating of scientific jargon into digestible summaries as the basis for his subsequent career in university research and development.