Jim Drury, a lion in the field of corporate board governance and talent selection, leads one of America’s foremost board-focused management consulting firms, Chicago-based JamesDruryPartners. Retained by a third of the Fortune 100, his firm has successfully placed hundreds of America’s most accomplished executives onto the boards of the country’s most prominent public companies. In addition to generating thought-provoking intellectual capital, such as “The Weight of America’s Boards,” Jim has revolutionized the field through his firm’s principal advisory service, BoardSelect®, a process that upends the traditional search model and enables CEOs and other top executives to proactively optimize their appointments to corporate boards.

 Prior to founding JamesDruryPartners, Jim was Vice Chairman, Americas, and served on the board of Spencer Stuart – a leading global executive search firm. He is a past Board Director of the Association of Executive Search Consultants and a former member of the University of Chicago’s Booth School Advisory Council. Jim currently serves on the boards of several Chicago-area civic and professional organizations.

 A renowned innovator and industry thought leader, Jim’s insights are frequently sought by top business media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, Agenda, and Fortune, where he provides expert opinion and analysis on matters of corporate governance, board composition, performance trends, and director readiness and recruitment. Previously, he pioneered the development of two of the country’s most respected corporate governance conferences, The Directors' College (University of Chicago Booth School of Business) and Toward Common Ground (Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management). Jim earned his MBA from the Chicago Booth School and his undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame.

 JamesDruryPartners, an elite board advisory services firm, offers a diverse array of board placement, recruitment, and advisory solutions. The firm has advised nearly 500 of the country’s top executives through BoardSelect®, its proactive board placement service. In addition, JDP undertakes traditional director search/board recruitment engagements and is frequently retained to replace retiring directors, rejuvenate legacy boards, and assemble new boards for spinouts and IPOs. JDP also provides director assessments, administers board evaluations, and selectively undertakes CEO search assignments.