Jim Tompkins is the president and CEO of Tompkins Associates.
Over the past 30-plus years, Jim has had the chance to work with people at hundreds of companies around the world. His office is wherever he happens to be at the time, as he spends about half of his time traveling and meeting with clients. Jim writes posts for this blog, podcast ideas, articles and even outlines for entire books while on the road or in airports. The other half of Jim's time is spent at the Tompkins Associates main campus in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Each day is different for Jim, with a 12-hour schedule packed full of client meetings, project team management, speaking engagements, authoring books and articles, and much more. Yet Jim believes in being an accessible leader and mentor to the employees at Tompkins Associates. No matter if he's scheduled to be in Raleigh, New York or Shanghai, he holds face-to-face or teleconferenced meetings every month for all employees to hear about what's going on and what's new for the company.
Jim attended Purdue University, where he received a bachelor's degree, a master's degree and a Ph.D. After attaining his degrees, Jim served in the U.S. Army. Once his service was completed, he took a teaching position at North Carolina State University. Two of the graduate students he was supervising at the time later became Tompkins Associates'; first employees: Jerry Smith and John Spain. Jim and his wife Shari have three children and six grandchildren.
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People who know Jim well and work with him every day say these words describe him best:
"Perseverance"
"Tremendous energy level"
"Dedicated"
"Passionate about what he does"
"Inspirational"
About Tompkins Associates
In 1975, Tompkins Associates officially took its first consulting job. Initially the company was focused on warehousing, but today, Tompkins' goal is to provide global supply chain services, distribution operations consulting, technology implementation, material handling integration, and supply chain benchmarking and best practices.
Tompkins Associates is made up of practical, results-oriented, engineering-based consultants. Although the first company headquarters was a spare building in Jim's backyard, today there is a beautiful campus in Raleigh, North Carolina, along with offices around the country and the globe.
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