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| As Co-founder and Managing Director of The Helixx Group, Jim Van Eerden provides direction to the firm's agency services, venture-building strategies, and M&A/alliance activities. Jim is known for his acumen as a positioning and alliances strategist, launching several pioneering businesses that have helped to re-shape the industry segments in which those companies have operated. His visionary instincts have earned him strategic engagements with senior executives from a clientele of industry titans including GM, MCI, USA TODAY, Southwest Airlines, and others. His commentary has appeared in eWeek, USA TODAY, Education Week, the Washington Post, and other publications. He has served as an Honorary Chairman for the Bush Campaign in North Carolina, and is a member on the Republican Congressional Committee's National Business Advisory Council. He recently conceived and helped launch a new Fourth of July tradition, known as "The American Tribute," which involved a national media campaign that he coordinated with The White House and other partners. These involvements reflect Jim's passion for effecting positive and large-scale change by working with high-impact business and idea leaders. Prior to co-founding The Helixx Group, Jim co-founded and served as CEO of a national technology consulting firm. The company grew to include about 150 employees across its various subsidiary operating units, before a merger prompted Jim's exit from the company. During that same time period, Jim also co-founded and coordinated alliance development for the country's leading K-12 Internet community services provider (www.edgate.com). Jim had previously worked with a brand management company that specialized in global sports sponsorships. Through engagements with Coca-Cola, M&M/Mars and American Airlines, Jim coordinated numerous national brand marketing programs. He also served as lead counsel in an engagement for the 1994 World Cup Organizing Committee and was retained to develop concepts for the Torch Run element of the Atlanta Olympic Games. Jim serves as a Board Director for Open Finance Network (a financial services platform servicing more than $1 billion of assets under management), International Teams (a global Christian mission agency with about 500 staff members worldwide), Wilberforce Forum, and for other business and philanthropic enterprises. He is also a member of the Board of Governors for Opportunity International, the world's largest faith-based micro-lending agency with more than 500,000 clients. Jim graduated from a Jesuit-run high school in Milwaukee, and then attended Grove City College, where he was named a Presidential Scholar. He has completed graduate study programs at Stanford and Oxford Universities, has an MA in philosophy, an MBA from Wake Forest University and is presently a candidate for a doctoral degree in Global Education, with an emphasis in Lifework Studies. He and his wife Rachel have ten children and live on a family homestead in Stokesdale, North Carolina.  |
