Jim Putnam

Early Background

From his earliest days Jim demonstrated a passion for diversity and excellence by leading his all star baseball teams from a small town in southeast Iowa to three state championships. He was the first athlete in his high school history to earn varsity letters in five different sports and to earn fourteen varsity letters in his career. Basketball, baseball and golf teams reached the state championships and he capped his athletic career as a member of the greatest basketball dynasty in Iowa high school history.

At the same time he participated in speech, debate, choir, band, held student body offices, was a reporter for the school newspaper and editor of the yearbook, while making the honor roll. Putnam wrote articles under a pseudonym for the prestigious Des Moines Register newspaper and received the outstanding journalism award from his school.

Politics

After attending the University of Arizona on a basketball scholarship and the University of Nebraska by age 22 he was working for the first of three mayors of Omaha, Nebraska, two Democrats and a Republican. His work included creating a number of national award winning demonstration programs with six different federal agencies that were pioneering in employment, housing, community revitalization, energy and environmental fields.

He served as deputy arrangements chairman for the Republican National Convention of 1972, having already worked on two US Senate campaigns and receiving national citations from two US presidents for intergovernmental program initiatives. The '72 race was the greatest landslide in history with the GOP willing 49 of 50 states.

Four years after joining the mayor's staff in Omaha he was a domestic affairs specialist for the Executive Office of the President in our nation's capitol working for Roy Ash (former co-founder and president of Litton Industries) and Frank Zarb (former president of NASDAQ) the director and deputy director of OMB. While at OMB and the White House he was a member of the New Federalism Task Force, a group The New York Times said had the greatest impact on federal domestic legislation since President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal.

Over the next decade he was a reporter for the Omaha World Herald daily newspaper, spent four terms working for the US Congress, managed two successful congressional campaigns, and helped elect a US Senator from Nebraska. Putnam also founded a successful consulting firm with the former mayor of Omaha where he invented and patented solar energy products and held an Atomic Energy Commission license to handle radioactive materials.

Presidential campaign experience included work for Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr. Later he worked for Ross Perot on presidential and NAFTA advertising and communications efforts. Because of his extensive administrative and policy experience Putnam moved easily between executive office and campaign teams and his work in statistical analysis and polling led to the wide scale use of perception analysis in campaigns, replacing focus groups.

His political experience culminated by serving as campaign manager for a 1990 US Senate race, hosting events with all four living GOP presidents the same year (Nixon, Ford, Reagan & Bush), and working with Roger Ailes (Reagan Media Consultant and now President of Fox News) on special interest campaigns. Putnam also worked with Governor Charles Thone of Nebraska and Governor Thomas Kean in New Jersey (recently chairman of 911 Terrorism Commission), serving the latter as a chief of staff, communications director and assistant state treasurer of New Jersey.

During the Kean re-election campaign in 1985 Putnam helped develop a minority crossover strategy that resulted in the highest minority vote total for a Republican governor candidate in the nation and Kean won re-election by the largest victory margin in New Jersey history. It was during the campaign Putnam became friends with Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King, who asked him to contribute a song to be performed at the first national holiday honoring King in Atlanta, a song titled I Had a Dream. He also was honored to work with Bishop Tutu of South Africa on various projects.

NYC Media

By 1990 he was in NYC working for independent media agencies on multi-million dollar creative, strategy and advertising campaigns. In 1992 he helped form Media, Inc. of NYC and was instrumental in building it to a $350 million agency before it was acquired by The Interpublic Group (IPG). He was also a member of the November Group for President Bush and Putnam worked with legendary BBDO Chairman Phil Dusenberry on one of the most successful non-profit advertising campaigns in America for the DeMoss Foundation.

During this time he formed his own media company in 1994, Ivy Hollow Productions. He produced the first digital recording of The New Testament of the Bible (16 CDs). Then he published a fiction book, The Joshua Chronicles, wrote music and served as creative consultant to National Geographic Television, where a series he helped create and produce, Really Wild Animals (CBS TV Network), earned one Emmy and five Emmy nominations.

Ivy Hollow undertook major national media campaigns for publishers and record companies in Nashville and created and produced a nationally syndicated weekly radio program. Numerous successful Christian artists and authors were introduced on the radio program. While in Nashville he wrote and recorded music and currently has copyrighted about 400 original songs, words and music. Included was collaboration on a song with Academy Award winner Dennis Malkowsky.

Research trips throughout Great Britain and Ireland preceded travel to Russia where he discovered extensive secret KGB cold war film archives of Josef Stalin, and Nazi SS film archives of Adolph Hitler, which had vanished 50 years earlier in the fall of Berlin. A non-fiction book he wrote on the inter-related history of Communism, Nazism, Hitler and Stalin titled, Saviors of the 20th Century - Hitler & Stalin - The War of Annihilation Between the Nazis and Communists, has received wide international acclaim.

By 2000 he joined The Interpublic Group of Companies (IPG) in NYC, one of the largest media companies in the world, while working on a series of books, documentaries and a movie script on the Russian and Nazi footage. He made several appearances as a guest and host of Russia Today, a syndicated public television program out of Washington, DC.

In 2001 Putnam helped one of the most significant KGB cold war defectors to the US, Victor Sheymov, establish a computer security company, Invicta Networks, with James Woolsey, former CIA Director under Clinton, and serves as communication director for the firm.

Putnam also works with CBA Pharma, Inc., a Kentucky pharmaceutical company, with a promising potential cure for cancer and other drug resistant diseases. According to the National Institute of Health CBA is the first firm to enter FDA Phase 3 human clinical trials with a natural compound that results in the destruction of multi-drug resistant cells and a New Drug Approval application with FDA is nearing submission.

From writing articles, columns, books and music to cyber security to pioneering medical breakthroughs, he has devoted his efforts to helping struggling artists, politicians and entrepreneurs find success in the world. Currently publisher of the popular Coltons Point Times syndicated newspaper on the web with over 250,000 readers in all 50 states and 119 foreign countries, he has recently completed two new books, Saviors and Take Me Now God!, an entertaining look at the endless search for meaning in life.

Throughout it all he has remained true to his principles of discovering truth and sharing it with the public through the use of multi-media and new technology.