Alumni Professional Award in Industrial Engineering: Jim Shaw

By Holly Hinson

Jim Shaw is the President and Co-Founder of Zion Solutions Group. He has more than 20 years of experience as a senior executive with areas of expertise including organizational strategy and development, new business development, solution design engineering, industrial engineering, network design, operations improvement and warehouse facility design. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Industrial Engineering from Speed School of Engineering, and stays involved with the Industrial Engineering department as an external advisory board member of Logistics and Distribution Institute (LoDI).

To Shaw, Speed School offered multiple opportunities for growth. “I met teachers that influenced my future leadership style, I met individuals that have become life-long friends and the experience gave me the technical + soft skills to have a meaningful engineering career,” said Shaw. “In addition, the opportunity to meet individuals from different walks of life and experience the diversity of classes that were available,” he said.

The engineer, who lives in Hodgenville, KY with his wife and four children, has a passion for travel and recently completed a cross country 10,000 mile RV trip with his family where they visited 20 states and 18 national parks.

Shaw said he is honored to be recognized for this award by the professors and the school that were instrumental in helping him mold and develop the skills to achieve professional success. “This award, in some ways, is validation that hard work, giving back, serving and building up others goes noticed and is appreciated,” said Shaw. “I have always believed that you put honesty, integrity and hard work into whatever you choose to do and to go about it humbly.

Shaw was presented the award during Speed School’s annual awards dinner at the Brown Hotel on Oct. 21, 2022.