Throughout his career, Jim Williams has never been afraid to take a chance. Whether it’s being part of the first class of Oregon State MBA grads, starting his own business or as an Angel Investor, Williams has always followed his instincts—and more often than not—been rewarded for it.
Williams grew up in Coos Bay, Ore., where he played football and wrestled. He was only the second freshman in Marshfield High School history to earn a varsity letter and his coaches instilled the “never give up” attitude he has to this day. At Oregon State he earned a degree in Industrial Engineering before joining the first-ever class of OSU MBA students in 1966.
“The MBA program was a real mind-expander, because in the engineering program you only got about three electives,” Williams remembered. “You really had to be proactive in your career. You needed a broad-based education, which is why I jumped when the MBA program was initiated. It opened up a lot of doors for me that became important in the future.”
With the war in Vietnam raging, Williams joined the military. Because of his MBA degree, he was one of fifteen nationally to be chosen for a select officer commission in the Air Force in hospital administration. Williams, as a Captain in the USAF, was stationed near Oxford, England and quickly learned about an industry that would soon become his lifelong career.
“That was a total career-changer for me because I learned about hospital administration,” Williams said. “In college, you never thought about hospitals as being a career in those days. Through my experience in England, working with not only our military hospitals but also the English National Health Service, I learned about it as an industry.”
When Williams left the Air Force in 1970, the United States’ health care industry was in need of fresh ideas and new management styles. Medicare had been created in 1965, and many hospitals were struggling with the new requirements and erratic reimbursement.
Williams sent letters to hospitals in Oregon offering his services and connected with A. E. “Gene” Brim, an innovative hospital administrator and consultant. Together the pair started their own consulting firm, Brim, Inc., with Williams as vice chairman and chief operating officer. The company started in Portland in 1971 with the two founders and their secretaries as the only employees. Initially, they provided traditional healthcare consulting but in 1973 hit on a new idea and started signing long-term contracts to manage hospitals themselves.
“We made a presentation to the Eugene Hospital and Clinic and decided that instead of offering consulting services, we would propose to totally take responsibility for managing their business,” Williams remembered. “This launched the first company in the nation to specialize in contracting to manage hospitals, and their business doubled every year for a number of years.”
“Every day was an adrenaline rush,” Williams said.
In addition to the hospital work, Williams helped develop an entrepreneurial culture at Brim that led to the creation of more than 20 new healthcare related subsidiaries.
“We were really risk takers and entrepreneurial, before we even knew the word entrepreneurial,” he said. “We attracted people who had innovative ideas and we incubated those ideas to create many health care companies. Some worked, some didn’t.”
Besides his role as vice chairman of the parent company, Williams was president of the development subsidiary, which built over 100 healthcare facilities, and also president of the senior living subsidiary which was a national leader in a new industry that is now known as assisted living. When they sold the hospital division in 1997, the company that had started with four people now owned and operated 58 hospitals, employed more than 2,500, had been named as one of the “Ten Best Companies in Oregon to Work For,” and was the 34th largest private company in Oregon.
After the sale in 1997, Williams and some associates started Encore Senior Living, an assisted living company specializing in Alzheimer’s care. With Williams as president and CEO, Encore grew to own and operate 40 facilities in 9 states and have annual revenue in excess of $60 million.
Though Williams retired in 2002, he still acts as an Angel Investor for small companies and is president of CTK Capital Corporation, a family-owned investment company. The entrepreneurial spirit is now a family affair. All three of Williams’ children graduated from Oregon State and then completed the MBA program in Entrepreneurship at the University of Arizona.
Williams has also been generous with his time. He and wife Chris’ support of children is a priority, from coaching Little League to helping create Trillium Family Services, Oregon’s largest child services agency. It has also led them to contribute to Oregon State and the College of Business. Williams has served for many years as an advisory board member for the Austin Entrepreneurship Program, and more recently the OSU Advantage Accelerator. He is also on the OSU Foundation Board of Trustees where he serves on the finance committee.
“It’s inspirational to be involved with Oregon State—with all the energy these students have and the things they are creating,” he said. “It not only gives you a good feeling to give a little back to an exceptional university, but the campus energy makes you forget you are not as young as you once were.”
