Jim Sorenson

Jim is a world-renowned entrepreneur, business leader, innovator, and impact investor. He has built highly successful companies in industries ranging from technology and life sciences to real estate and private equity investment. He is celebrated as a pioneer in the impact investing sector.

Early in his real estate experience, Jim developed the 120-acre Sorenson Research Park. Today, he leads an investment group developing market-leading commercial and residential projects, including Rosecrest Communities, The Herriman Towne Center, and The Pointe, a mixed-use business park in Draper, Utah. In 2009, Jim led a team that acquired a $701 million structured portfolio of commercial real estate loans from the FDIC.

Early in his career, Jim acquired and managed Utah Biomedical Test Labs and spun out a promising division, DataChem Laboratories, as an independent venture. DataChem became one of the nation’s largest environmental testing laboratories, pioneering today’s environmental testing industry.

As CEO of Sorenson Media, Jim built a team that developed the world’s leading digital compression software, which played a crucial role in the emergence and prominence of video compression technology in Apple QuickTime, Macromedia (now Adobe) Flash, and YouTube. Spun off as Sorenson Communications, the company expanded quickly, growing from 50 to 2,500 employees while raising revenue by 400 percent in 2003 and 2004. In 2005, the company was acquired in the most lucrative private equity deal in Utah history to that date.

Jim also co-founded Sorenson Capital, Utah’s leading mid-market private equity firm, which has raised more than a billion dollars to invest in U.S. companies.

In addition, Jim served as chairman of the board of MediConnect Global, a leader in medical record retrieval that sold to Verisk Analytics in 2012 for over $377 million.

In 2013, Jim provided the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah with a $13 million endowment to create the Sorenson Impact Center, with the mission of cultivating impact investing expertise in students and building the social impact field. Jim plays an active role in setting the Center’s direction and mentoring its student participants.