Jim Messina

The Moneyball President: How the Obama Reelection Campaign Handled Its Business—and Why It Matters for Yours

As the campaign manager of President Obama’s reelection effort, Jim Messina upended the way that cutting-edge organizations think about strategy, marketing, and branding—reinventing the modern political campaign and pioneering tools, technologies, and tactics that will transform global business, too. In this talk, Messina tells the behind-the-scenes story of Obama for America 2012, from the month he spent soliciting Silicon Valley’s smartest CEOs for their advice – including Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt – to his successful launch of a $1.1 billion start-up. He reveals three critical insights about how dramatically the world has changed in a few fast years. And he suggests three lessons for how consumer-facing companies can prosper not just in spite of these changes, but by embracing them.

Shaping a Presidency, Electing a President: Insights from America’s Premier Political Strategist

In the White House, Jim Messina was known as “the fixer,” tasked with shepherding some of President Obama’s most important legislative priorities, including healthcare reform, through Congress. When he became the manager of the Obama 2012 campaign, he was entrusted with the most important priority of all: reelecting a president. In this lecture, Jim Messina takes you behind the scenes of the 2012 campaign, from the command center in Chicago, to the high-stakes decisions in the Oval Office, to the inner workings of the smallest field offices in the battlegrounds of Ohio, Virginia, and Florida. Through stories of the pressures and personalities at play, Messina offers unique insights into what the next four years hold for the Obama administration, our national politics, and the biggest issues facing America today.

The mastermind behind President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, Jim Messina seized the reins on what Bloomberg Businessweek dubbed “the highest-wattage crash course in executive management ever undertaken”—and succeeded, earning the President another term in the White House. With the guidance of technology’s foremost leaders, Messina abandoned every step of a traditional presidential campaign and merged technology and politics in a way that was both unpredictable and unprecedented. Messina’s strategies established the modern presidential campaign—Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt called it “the best-run campaign ever.”

Jim Messina served as Deputy Chief of Staff to President Barack H. Obama from 2009 to 2011, where he was integral to the passage of the landmark health care and economic stimulus bills, in addition to serving as the campaign manager for Obama's successful 2012 re-election campaign. He previously served as Director of Personnel for the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition and as national chief of staff for Obama for America.

Messina joined the Obama campaign from the office of U.S. Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), where he was chief of staff. He previously held the same position for U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY).

He has overseen and consulted on political campaigns across the country, from Alaska to New York. He is a graduate of the University of Montana and attended high school in Boise, Idaho.