James Lee Sorenson is a nationally recognized business leader and entrepreneur who helped develop several new industry categories in the today's business world, including digital compression software, mass-market videophones, video relay service for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, electronic medical pain pumps and environmental testing.

Jim was honored as Utah Business magazine's 2007 CEO of the Year, but he did not begin his career at the top. When still in college, he began by managing an outdated company named Ex-Cel-Cis Cosmetics that was struggling with $30,000 in annual revenue. Within a few years, he rebuilt and re-energized Ex-Cel-Cis and its revenues topped $1 million. Also early in his career, Jim managed Utah Biomedical Test Labs and spun out a promising section of it, DataChem Laboratories, as an independent venture. DataChem then helped pioneer today's multi-million-dollar environmental testing industry and is now a premier laboratory with a national clientele.

In more recent years as CEO of Sorenson Media, Jim's team developed the world's leading digital compression software, which was used on more than a half-billion personal computers worldwide. His team also developed a high-quality, low-cost videophone that is now the consumer industry's standard design. Then, taking the videophone potential further, he created a nationwide video relay service for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals enabling them to communicate through interpreters for free in their visual native language, American Sign Language, with any hearing person in the U.S. and its territories.

Split off as Sorenson Communications, the video relay service company expanded quickly, growing from 50 to 2,500 employees while raising revenue by 400 percent in 2003 and 2004. Then in 2005, the company was acquired by GTCR Golder Rauner LLC in the most lucrative private equity deal in Utah history up to that time.

As CEO of Sorenson Medical, Jim's team developed a new generation of medical infusion pumps that are portable and electronically controlled. These small, state-of-the-art infusion pumps allow secure delivery of pain medication, antibiotics or chemotherapy to patients who can then retain their mobility and everyday lives during treatment. In 2006, Jim was named a "Healthcare Hero" by Utah Business magazine for donating Sorenson Medical ambIT pain pumps to the U.S. military for use in combat conditions on wounded soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the real estate industry, Jim began by developing the 120-acre Sorenson Research Park in the early 1980s. Today, he is CEO of The Sorenson Group of Real Estate Companies, which owns more than 70,000 acres and develops market-leading commercial and residential projects.

Jim co-founded the private equity company Sorenson Capital to invest in small-to mid-size western U.S. companies. In 2003, Sorenson Capital raised a quarter of a billion dollars in private equity, at that time the most money ever raised by a Utah investment company.

In 2001, Jim provided the seed money for the University Venture Fund (UVF) at University of Utah's David Eccles School of Business. It is now the largest student-run educational investment fund, with more than $18 million, and provides unrivaled experience in venture capital and entrepreneurship for students.

Jim has been a long-time advocate for the deaf and hard-of-hearing community and is a major patron of their causes. In other philanthropic endeavors, Jim prefers self-sustaining charitable enterprises that can empower large numbers of people. He actively donates time, money and energy to micro-credit institutions helping individuals in poverty-stricken areas become self-sufficient. He serves on many community service boards, including UVF, Art Works for Kids, Gallaudet University, and Utah Governor's Office of Economic Development.