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            • Jim McComb

            • 2025 Ambassador of the Year

              Jim McComb

              Jim McComb spends his days living in the future, forecasting unforeseen and unimagined Wild Card and Black Swan opportunities and threats.  He uses those forecasts to guide businesses, non-profits, and churches in successfully anticipating and leveraging the Uncertainty that is in their Future.

              A senior executive at organizations including Bank of America, Countrywide Financial, the US Farm Credit System, and America’s largest corporate credit union – and later as a partner in a worldwide strategic planning consultancy – he has been shaping and executing business strategy for more than 40 years.

              Jim relocated to Kingsport in 2021, returning to a region he came to love while getting a business degree at the University of Tennessee in the early 1970’s. His business, Wild Card Strategy, guides clients in developing and implementing strategic plans. He shows them how to identify, anticipate, and prepare for unknown opportunities and threats that will disrupt and alter the future of their organization forever.

              Jim is a thought leader in the strategy profession, having served as president of the International Association of Strategy Professionals, and receiving induction into the Association’s Hall of Fame in 2009. He has been a frequent keynote speaker on strategy-related topics at business conferences and summits in the United States, Europe, Asia, South America, and Canada, and is one of only 100 people in the world to hold the Strategic Management Professional (SMP) certification. His forthcoming book, Certain Success in an Uncertain World: How to Survive and Thrive in a Disruptive Future is due in 2026, and an earlier title, Undiscovered Horizons, was an Amazon bestseller in 2014.

              An enthusiastic member of the Kingsport Chamber of Commerce, Jim is a Chamber Ambassador, a KOSBE Awards judge, and a member of the 2026 Leadership Kingsport class. He provides pro bono strategic planning facilitation to non-profits served by United Way of Greater Kingsport, and is a workforce mentor in the tnAchieves program, mentoring college students statewide in preparing for successful entry into the Tennessee workforce. Jim also sits on the board of Liberty Celebration Kingsport (LCK) as secretary of the charitable foundation supporting their efforts to raise money for veterans’ programs by presenting a biennial patriotic musical extravaganza (now in its 28th year).

              Jim and his wife Sally live in rural Sullivan County and are the parents of two adult daughters.