Jim Shultz

Jim Shultz has been an executive director of the Democracy Center since 1992, and has spread his work globally, leading and supporting winning citizen action campaigns across five continents and training thousands of citizen activists. Since 2007 he has also served as a global advocacy advisor to UNICEF. Jim is the author of six books, including most recently, Lessons from Lockport, Dispatches from the Great American Divide (SUNY Press), and is a regular contributor to publications including the New York Times, New York Review, Nation, and others. He is also a weekly opinion columnist for the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal. Jim teaches advocacy at UC Berkeley, the University of Buffalo Law School, and at Salzburg Global. In 1991, Jim and his wife Lynn spent their first year of marriage as volunteers in an orphanage in Bolivia and returned there in 1998 for one more year – which turned out to be almost twenty. He currently divides his time between Cochabamba, Bolivia and Lockport, New York. Jim is the father of three, the grandfather of four. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from UC Berkeley and a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University. Jim is a Salzburg Global Fellow.