About

• Past President of the National League of Cities

• Author, “The Amazing City-7 Steps to Creating an Amazing City“

• Author, “Bottom Line Green-How America’s Cities are Saving the Planet(And Money Too!) with Mike Conduff

• Former Mayor & Council member in Clarksburg, West Virginia

• News & Journal Columnist

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Jim Hunt is an author, speaker and CEO of Amazing Cities, an organization he founded to assist local governments achieve excellence through innovation and technology. Jim speaks to thousands of local officials each year and works with companies and organizations that provide innovative products and services to local governments.

Jim Hunt served as President of the National League of Cities in 2005 and was the 2006 “Municipal Leader of the Year by American City & County Magazine. He led the National League of Cities, Partnership for Inclusive Communities, a nationwide program to promote inclusively  in America’s cities.

Jim has been described by Indiana University Professor and Past-President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Paul Helmke as “Amazing! Jim has traveled to more cities-large and small, in the US as well as around the world, than most people get to in many lifetimes. But what really impresses me is that he has learned something important of general applicability from each of the places he’s visited.” National League of Cities Executive Director, Clarence Anthony said of him, “From his service as mayor of Clarksburg, West Virginia to his leadership as president of the National League of Cities, Jim Hunt’s career has focused on building amazing cities that will thrive and prosper into the future.”

Before Jim founded Amazing Cities, he served as a senior manager with the West Virginia Housing Development Fund and as Executive Director of Sunnyside Up-Campus Neighborhoods Revitalization Corporation. He was responsible for over $750M in housing and infrastructure development over his career and developed the first Non-Profit Tax Increment Financing project in the state of West Virginia. His work, on one of the largest transfers of a federal facility(F.B.I. Fingerprint Division) to West Virginia, earned him special recognition from Judge William Sessions, F.B.I. Director.

A life-long West Virginian, Jim attended West Virginia University, obtaining a Bachelor of Science degree in 1973. He fulfilled a lifetime dream of playing basketball for the West Virginia University Mountaineers as a walk-on player in 1968-69. He continued his education with graduate work at West Virginia University and a fellowship with the European Union in Brussels, Belgium. 

He previously served on the World Council of the United Cities and Local Governments(UCLG) in Barcelona, Spain and on the Board of Directors of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition in Washington, DC. Jim served as Vice-President of his local Habitat for Humanity chapter and traveled to Poland and Hungary to build homes for needy families. He has been inducted into the West Virginia Municipal League Hall of Fame and received the Municipal League’s Lifetime Achievement Award, In 2018, the West Virginia Municipal League honored Jim by renaming the Lifetime Achievement Award as the “Jim Hunt Lifetime Achievement Award”. 

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Active in his community, Jim is a member of the Harrison County Chamber of Commerce, the Clarksburg Kiwanis Club and serves as Ambassador Emeritus of the United States Army Reserve.

Jim’s greatest accomplishment is his family which consists of his wife, Pam, Daughter Sarah, Son Jason, Daughter-in-Law Stacie and four granddaughters, Ali, Avery, Emery and Sadie. 

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