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, 2012, 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 2019, after nearly 30 years, 5-million airline miles, and more than 3,000 college appearances, he retired from full-time speaking. Although he accepts a limited number of campus speaking invitations, he now makes a living as the President & CEO of the Parker Chamber of Commerce & Foundation in the Denver, Colorado, area, nurturing small business owners much like he nurtured college speakers for so many years. He frequently is tapped as a consultant for chambers and small non-profit organizations around goal-setting and board development.
He is a faculty member of the Western Association of Chamber Executives’ Academy program and a board member of that organization. In 2020, he was named CEO of the Year by the Colorado’s state chamber association. He has received recognitions from the Colorado Women’s Chamber of Commerce and the Denver Business Journal.