Jim Shelton is the Chief Executive Officer of Blue Meridian Partners and a member of its Board of Directors.
Jim leads Blue Meridian’s efforts to connect investors and visionary leaders to utilize transformative capital to scale solutions that enable all Americans to achieve economic and social mobility and escape the persistent and powerful gravitational pull of poverty.
Prior to becoming CEO in March 2025, Jim served as President and Chief Investment and Impact Officer, overseeing Blue Meridian’s day-to-day operations and its efforts to continuously increase the impact, reach, and influence of social sector leaders and their organizations. During this period, Blue Meridian redoubled its nationwide efforts to expand effective solutions and deepened its support of regional and local strategies to break the predictive power of who one’s parents are and where one grows up on life chances through the compounding benefits of proven and promising solutions from cradle to career. Jim also led Blue Meridian’s pursuit of new approaches to improving economic and social mobility, including extending the organization’s work to explore the roles of for-profits, policy, and advocacy.
Jim’s early career spanned software development and impact-focused entrepreneurship, investing, and philanthropy. He served as the Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Education and was the founding Executive Director of My Brother’s Keeper. Subsequently, he was President and Chief Impact Officer at 2U, Inc. partnering with colleges and universities to increase access to and affordability of top degree programs. He later served as the founding President of Education for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Immediately before joining Blue Meridian, Jim founded Amandla Enterprises, an impact investment and advisory firm.
Jim serves on the boards of several non-profit and for-profit impact-focused organizations and is a Senior Social Impact Advisor to KKR.
Jim holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Morehouse College and master’s degrees in business administration and education from Stanford University.