As a strate­gist, sce­nario plan­ner, and lead­er­ship advi­sor, Jim Butch­er has over 25 years of expe­ri­ence engag­ing deci­sion-mak­ers and lead­ers with new insights to make bet­ter deci­sions lead­ing to excep­tion­al results — today and tomor­row. He uses advanced strat­e­gy and sce­nario plan­ning approach­es, inno­va­tion, and cus­tomized engage­ment and lead­er­ship mod­els.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, Jim served as a Man­ag­ing Direc­tor at Mor­gan Stan­ley in senior lead­er­ship roles and as a Senior Part­ner with the Glob­al Busi­ness Net­work (GBN), where he worked with and learned from the orig­i­nal sce­nario plan­ning mas­ters Pierre Wack and Napi­er Col­lyns. In both roles, he devel­oped deep exper­tise in strate­gic and sce­nario plan­ning across all indus­try sec­tors, inno­v­a­tive approach­es, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, lead­er­ship and social impact invest­ing. His ear­ly career with the Ford Foun­da­tion, Boston Con­sult­ing Group (BCG) and lead­ing a Clin­ton Admin­is­tra­tion White House ini­tia­tive to cre­ate the first sus­tain­able U.S. Nation­al Ener­gy Plan pro­vid­ed a broad­er foun­da­tion in cross-sec­tor strate­gies, pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships, and more effec­tive­ly address­ing com­plex, sys­tem lead­er­ship issues that cross tra­di­tion­al insti­tu­tion­al bound­aries.

His most recent work includes help­ing cor­po­rate clients with devel­op­ing new strate­gies in auto­mo­tive, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, food and agri­cul­ture, ener­gy (both oil & gas and renew­ables) and health­care. Across all sec­tors, rapid dig­i­tal accel­er­a­tion and tech­nol­o­gy evo­lu­tion is a major dri­ver today. In health­care, for exam­ple, clients are per­plexed at how the U.S. health­care sys­tem may evolve in com­ing years. For autos, the cur­rent indus­try struc­ture is in flux and will be very dif­fer­ent in com­ing years. Around com­plex prob­lems such as cli­mate change and food sup­plies, he has worked with gov­ern­ments and col­lab­o­ra­tive groups around new inno­v­a­tive approach­es for cli­mate resilience. With impact and sus­tain­able invest­ing, he has been work­ing with fun­ders and advi­sors on new inno­v­a­tive high impact approach­es. And, with new start-up com­pa­nies, whether in agri­cul­ture, water, ener­gy, or biotech, he has been an advi­sor for cap­i­tal rais­ing, growth, man­age­ment teams, lead­er­ship and new financ­ing from angel investors, pri­vate equi­ty, ven­ture cap­i­tal and impact wealth advi­sors.

A com­pelling speak­er and world-class facil­i­ta­tor, Jim shares his expe­ri­ence and exper­tise in a vari­ety of set­tings, includ­ing writ­ing for pub­li­ca­tions like Har­vard Busi­ness Review (HBR), a guest lec­tur­er at lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties and busi­ness schools, includ­ing Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford (Said Busi­ness School), Yale, Stan­ford, and Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ties, and speak­ing at many indus­try and client con­fer­ences.

Jim received his M.A. and B.A. degrees in Phi­los­o­phy, Pol­i­tics and Eco­nom­ics (PPE), with advanced eco­nom­ics focus, at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, Eng­land, where he was a Rhodes Schol­ar. His under­grad­u­ate degree is in civ­il and envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing from Utah State Uni­ver­si­ty. He has served on var­i­ous advi­so­ry pan­els, includ­ing the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, Amer­i­can Water Foun­da­tion, and the Lead­er­ship Coun­cil of the Cor­po­rate Eco-Forum (CEF).