Jim Peacock is an award-winning career development specialist and owner of Peak-Careers. He has more than 25 years of experience giving career advisors and counselors the tools to help their clients see that they have choices and that—with a little support—they can find the work they love to do.
A nationally certified Global Career Development Facilitator Instructor, trainer, consultant and speaker, Jim specializes in helping career development professionals improve their career advising skills for a more holistic approach to addressing the needs of their students and clients.
Where Jim started
Jim knows well the winding road people can take on their way to a job doing what they most love. He started college studying forestry when an “accidental” job as resident assistant in the dorms got him excited about working with students in a college setting. He found that he loved it.
Since then, he has used his extensive career development and training skills in a wide variety of higher educations settings, from a 2-year community college and a small, 4-year liberal arts college to large public and private universities.
Where Jim is today: helping career professionals connect academic and career advising for better results
These days Jim is a teacher and facilitator who is passionate about helping people find what it is they love to do—what lights them up. As Director of the Advising, Career and Transfer Center at Kennebec Valley Community College, he has helped hundreds of students as the campus’s career and transfer counselor and academic advisor.
After working with college students for years, Jim decided that he could touch even more students’ lives by also providing quality professional development for people who work in the field of career advising.
Since then, he has trained hundreds of career development professionals to improve their career counseling skills and services to better support their clients’ career decisions.
Jim believes that career and academic advising are intertwined, that all academic advisors are also career development facilitators and that most college students need career information, but do not always know where to go to access it. He is convinced that if advisors have the right resources, they can successfully guide, nudge and support students in their journey.
7 things you might not know about Jim
- His teaching philosophy is: “Provide people with practical quality information that they can use; make them laugh, and they will remember it.”
- He plays hockey 2-3 times a week in the winter months.
- His unfinished to-do list includes finishing the book he started on his year of travel through New Zealand and Australia, and someday getting back to New Zealand.
- As a survivor of a near-death experience, he is passionate about making his life count by impacting other people’s lives
- He has backpacked over 1,200 miles of the Mexico-to-Canada Pacific Crest Trail and figures he will be 150 years old by the time he completes the journey
- On a Saturday, you might find Jim hanging out with his wife: fishing, kayaking, camping, and enjoying the outdoors, or enjoying a live theatre performance.
- Jim and his wife Deborah have three grown sons.
More about Jim:
Education and Credentials:
Masters Degree in Education, Oregon State University, 1983
Bachelors Degree in Forestry, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, 1979
Certification: Global Career Development Facilitator Instructor
Awards:
- National Career Development Association (NCDA) Outstanding Career Practitioner of the Year Award, 2007
- National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) Region 1 Best of the Region Conference Presenter, 2008
- NACADA Region 1 Academic Excellence in Advising Award, 2005
Leadership and affiliations:
- Past President, Maine School Counselor Association (MESCA)
- Past President, Maine Career Development Association (MCDA)
- Career and Academic Advising expert, National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) Consultants and Speakers Service
- Member, Maine Career Development Association (MCDA)
- Member, National Career Development Association (NCDA)
- Member, National Academic Advising Association (NACADA)
- Member, Middle Atlantic Career Counseling Association (MACCA)
Publishing credits:
- Content Review Panel for The Handbook of Career Advising published by National Academic Advising Association.
- Content Review Panel for Career Achievement: Growing Your Goals, by Dr. Karine Blackett. McGraw-Hill Publishing
Presentations at conferences:
Jim has been a conference presenter for more than 25 years. A sampling of recent presentations:
- Happenstance Happens. How Can We Help Clients Choose Majors / and Occupations Using Happenstance?
- Can an “ENFP” Be a Forester?
- How to Choose a Major by Accident
- Providing Quality—and Affordable—Career Services to Your client
- Using Career Assessments Appropriately to Help Students Choose a Career or Major.
- Understanding How Career Development Connects to Academic Advising.
- Career Advising Case Studies: Solving the Case.
