Jim Ziolkowski was 23 years old when he derailed a promising career in corporate finance with General Electric to mobilize an extraordinary crusade. Venturing into many of America’s most challenging high schools Jim recruited an unlikely army of young activists whose ranks now number in the thousands — urban youth who are changing our world from the ground up.
It began while trekking through the mountains of Nepal. Jim happened on a village celebrating the opening of its first school and the outpouring of pride he witnessed from the community changed the course of his life. He was inspired to share this spirit of resilience in the face of extreme poverty with American youth who faced challenges in their own communities. Within 18 months of returning to the U.S., Jim would quit his fast-track finance position at GE to follow his dream of partnering youth from inner-city communities with inhabitants in distant villages to change the world.
With the goal of developing a methodology that would mobilize urban youth through service, Jim moved into a half abandoned and boarded up brownstone in Harlem during the late 90’s. As he watched America’s drug wars unfold from his door step, Jim came to understand the enormous hardships teens were facing just to get to school. Drug trafficking, gangs and prostitution were an everyday reality.
Through this experience he developed a revolutionary afterschool youth development program to put students in control of their own destiny using civic engagement as a catalyst. This movement, which came to be known as buildOn, engages students in service both locally and globally. While students in Detroit feed homeless veterans, kids from the South Bronx are building schools in West Africa. All are changing lives.
Now, 20 years later, Jim is still the guiding force of buildOn and has been strongly influenced by personal meetings with Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama. However, Jim has been most profoundly influenced by the youth he has worked with from America’s biggest cities to the poorest villages on the planet. It is their courage, hope and thirst for change that inspire Jim every day.
Jim graduated cum laude from Michigan State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Finance. He has been featured on NBC’s TODAY Show, CNN’s AC360, CBS Evening News, and Big Ten Sports Network, among others. In fall of 2010, Jim was named one of Catholic Digest’s 2010 Catholic Heroes. He has also been honored as a Bank of America “Local Hero” and by KEEN (Kids Enjoy Exercise Now) in NYC, where buildOn students volunteer as athlete coaches every Saturday.
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