T.J. Sullivan has three decades’ experience as an influential voice in college student leadership. He has spoken to audiences in all 50 states and has won top national awards from the Association of Fraternity and Sorority Advisors, the American College Personnel Association, and the North-American Interfraternity Conference. He has keynoted hundreds of national and regional college leadership conferences, as well as fraternity and sorority conventions and events.
His book on college leadership, Motivating the Middle: Fighting Apathy in College Student Organizations (Wheatmark, 2016), is a mainstay in hundreds of university leadership courses.
T.J. graduated from Indiana University-Bloomington with a degree in Journalism and went to work for his fraternity, Pi Kappa Phi, for several years. He moved to Colorado in 1991. and in 1992, he and his close friend, Joel Goldman, began a campus program called Friendship in the Age of AIDS. There was enormous demand for HIV & AIDS education, and the two quickly became the busiest speakers on the college lecture circuit, touring for 7 years, and impacting the choices of a generation of young adults nationwide. For their efforts, they were recognized with the “Angels Award” from the Ryan White Foundation, an honor shared with better-known names like Elton John and Elizabeth Taylor.
In 1999, T.J. started what quickly became the largest college speakers agency in the U.S.. He nurtured the careers of several well-known campus speakers and established many of the best practices for that industry. T.J. considers his nurturing of more than 200 professional speakers and the dozens of agency employees and interns as his greatest professional accomplishment. He sold his interests in 2014 and went on to be a minority partner in the agency that represents him today, ForCollegeForLife.
In 2019, after nearly 30 years, 5-million airline miles, and more than 3,000 college appearances, he retired from full-time speaking. He is now the President & CEO of a chamber of commerce in the Denver, Colorado, area, nurturing small business owners much like he nurtured college speakers for so many years.
He is an Academy graduate of the Western Association of Chamber Executives, and in 2020, he was named CEO of the Year by the Association of Colorado Chambers of Commerce. He has received recognitions from the Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce and the Denver Business Journal.
Although he still accepts about a dozen college invitations each year for keynotes, planning retreats, and panels, he was very happy to give up his elite frequent flyer status to run a Tuesday night bowling league in Denver and for more time spent with his husband, sons, and their chihuahuas, Pickle and Jelly.