Jamie D. Elder

Jamie D. Elder is an Army veteran and life-long entrepreneur who was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He started his first business when he was 21 which was the first 1-800-GOT-JUNK? franchise in the state of Wisconsin. At the age of 29, he was appointed to Governor Scott Walker’s administration to serve as the Director, Office of Urban Development for the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families. In 2016, he relocated to Washington, DC to serve as a Director of Strategic Partnership for a national venture philanthropy firm called Stand Together Foundation–serving over five hundred wealthy business leaders across the country. In 2019, he briefly worked as the Director of Urban Development for a legacy-minded private equity firm called Ambassador Enterprises in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In 2020, he partnered with W. Isaac McCoy and John K. McKiel to form an impact-minded private equity firm called I2J Group LLC resulting in their first acquisition of a small home improvement company called SurfacePros in Dallas, TX. He currently manages the Small Business Development Center for the Industrial Council of Nearwest Chicago which is the largest small business incubator in the United States.

Jamie earned his A.S. in Business Administration and B.S. in Organizational Leadership from Penn State University. He is also a proud alum of the Harvard Kennedy School Senior Executives in State and Local Government and Aspen Institute Socrates programs. Jamie also serves on the boards and committees for various organizations that focus on entrepreneurship, employment, and education. In his free time, Jamie enjoys reading, writing, basketball, soccer, and all things Green Bay Packers.