Center for Nonprofit Leadership > Faculty

Jim Cathcart
Cathcart Institute & Founder of the 101 Leaders Alliance

Specialty: Motivation in Business. Jim Cathcart teaches leaders how to organize projects and motivate people to get things done...even when they don't feel like doing it. As a board member and civic leader he has served in key positions for the Boys & Girls Clubs, the Service Club Leaders Conference, and the United States Jaycees. With over 34 years of professional speaking around the world, Jim Cathcart is one of the best known and most award-winning motivational speakers in the business. He has delivered more than 2,700 presentations to audiences in every state of the US, most provinces of Canada and countries from China to Poland. Two of his most recent international engagements were for thousands of business leaders in Bogota’, Colombia and Santiago, Chile!

A researcher and philosopher at heart, Jim is also a down to earth regular guy. He has worked in warehouses, driven trucks, sold donuts door to door, been a bank teller, played guitar in night clubs and beer pubs (still does in fact), and sold motorcycles. In the early 1970s he started studying personal development and never turned back. Today he has authored 15 books, won every award a professional speaker can get and served as president of the National Speakers Association.

Jim was an insurance agent for many years, an Army officer and a bill collector who, while in his twenties, had to repossess log trucks in the mountains of northern Arkansas. From this varied background he decided in 1972 to become an authority on the subject of motivation and through decades of dedication and hard work, made it happen.

Today he is listed in the professional Speaker Hall of Fame, is a recipient of the prestigious Golden Gavel Award (along with Earl Nightingale, Art Linkletter, Zig Ziglar and many others), has been the president of the National Speakers Association and received the Cavett Award for a lifetime of service. He has authored 14 books and scores of recorded programs.

Chosen in 2010 and 2011 as one of the Top 5 Speakers on Sales & Customer Service in a nationwide survey. In 2007 Jim was listed as one of The Top 100 Minds on Personal Development by Leadership Excellence magazine. The San Diego chapter of the National Speakers Association renamed their member of the year award “The Jim Cathcart Service Award” and the Greater Los Angeles chapter gave Jim the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003. In 2008 he was inducted as one of the “Legends of the Speaking Profession.”

Jim Cathcart is an active motivational speaker and prolific author plus an executive coach to numerous high-achievers. In his personal time he plays Rock n Roll guitar in night clubs, rides his motorcycle on the twistiest roads he can find and runs the trails of the mountains near his home at least twice each week. He’s a proud parent and grandparent and an active civic leader.

He has continually served on the board of advisors to the School of Business at both Pepperdine University and California Lutheran University. His messages can be seen on www.DailySuccessStream.com and on www.TSTN.com.

Jim has facilitated the following CNL course:

• Public Speaking to Advance Your Profession
• Resume the Boom!