Summer Forum: Dr. Jim Wagner

Dr. Jim Wagner, Past President of Emory University:
The Real Benefits of Higher Education

Dr. Wagner will discuss the economic and social impact of a higher education on our GDP, the real cost benefits of a higher education and implications for the future.

Summer Forum events are free and open to the public;
no reservations are required.

Speaker Bio

Prior to retiring to Hilton Head Island 18 months ago, James W. Wagner served for 13 years as president of Emory University in Atlanta.  Much of his earlier professional experience was in engineering, first with the US Food and Drug Administration, then at Johns Hopkins University, and still later at Case Western Reserve University. 

He is a Fellow of the American Association of Arts and Sciences and is a Charter Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He has served on the boards of The Carter Center, the Georgia Research Alliance, SunTrust Banks, the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, the Atlanta Regional Council for Higher Education, the Atlanta Committee for Progress, Woodruff Arts Center, and the Community Foundation of the Lowcountry.  In 2009, he was appointed by President Obama as Vice-Chair of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. 

Both Jim and his wife, Debbie, are elders in the Presbyterian Church and are members of First Presbyterian Church of Hilton Head.  They have two daughters: Kimberly, an ordained Presbyterian minister who is completing her PhD studies in theology and homiletics at Emory; and Christine, a pre-school teacher who lives in Florida with her husband, Scott.