Jim Schultz

Jim Schultz founded Open Prairie as a private capital management company in 1999. He has led and overseen the management of four private equity funds with investments in innovative technologies spanning agriculture, medical devices, and information systems. Funds invested by Open Prairie have resulted in two successful IPO’s and created over 5,000 jobs across 31 portfolio investments. His current fund strategy is focused on agri-business investments in rural America under a USDA licensed rural business investment program (RBIP).

Jim is a fifth-generation Illinoisan, agribusiness entrepreneur, and private equity executive. Like his ancestors, Jim has continued his family legacy in agribusiness throughout the America’s with investments in ag-tech companies, ag-input companies, rural businesses and farmland. He has owned three proprietary soybean seed companies and three ag-chemical companies along with farmland in the Midwest and Brazil, representing over 17,000 acres. In his hometown of Effingham, Illinois, Jim developed and created in a bean field an office park, Network Centre, that has created over 1,500 professional jobs for college graduates seeking to remain in the east-central Illinois area. He gained extensive leadership experience with growth-stage capital expansion over the years by investing in rural America. Jim has served as the financial expert on mergers and acquisitions for clients in rural America in software development, banking, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, and entertainment.

From 2015-2017, Jim served in newly-elected State of Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner’s cabinet as the Director of the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity where he oversaw the following departments: foreign direct investment, business development, job training, energy, film, and tourism. He travelled on behalf of Governor Rauner leading Trade Missions to Japan, China, Canada, Germany and France.

Jim is a recognized leader throughout the State of Illinois. He has served as Chairman of the Board for Prime Banc Corporation – a multi-branch rural banking group serving southern and central Illinois – which grew organically from $40 million in assets to over $1 billion in assets…all in rural communities in Illinois. He also has served as Chairman of the Board for the following organizations: Illinois Chamber of Commerce, Southeast Illinois Community Foundation, The Cross Foundation, and Effingham County Community Foundation. Jim also served on the Advisory Board for the Chicago Federal Reserve.

Jim earned his MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurship from Northwestern University, a Juris Doctor Degree in Corporate Finance from DePaul University, and a Bachelor of Business Administration from Southern Methodist University (cum laude). Jim was born in Teutopolis, Illinois - adjacent to the building which housed his great-great-grandfather’s trading post which supplied wagons heading west on the National Trail. His office in Effingham is located three miles west on the same National Trail. Jim currently lives in Effingham, Illinois, where he and his wife Laura raised their three sons.