Jim Ziolkowski - Founder, President and CEO of buildOn and best-selling author of ‘Walk in Their Shoes.' Jim Ziolkowski graduated cum laude from Michigan State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Finance. He has been featured on NBC’s TODAY Show, NPR, The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Fast Company, and CBS Evening News. In fall of 2010, Jim was named one of Catholic Digest’s Catholic Heroes. His book Walk in Their Shoes Received a 2014 Christopher Award. At age twenty-five, Jim Ziolkowski gave up his career in corporate finance to create a not-for-profit organization that turns inner-city youths into community leaders at home and abroad. Under Jim’s leadership, high school students from the South Bronx to San Francisco have contributed more than 1.2 million hours of direct community service, and over the past twenty years, the organization has also constructed more than 550 schools in the world’s economically poorest countries, from Haiti to Nepal. buildOn is a non-profit organization that builds schools in developing countries while also running afterschool service programs in America's toughest inner-cities. At home or abroad, Jim's goal is to break the cycle of poverty, illiteracy and low expectations through service and education.

 

View the videos below to see Jim Ziolkowski in action.