About Jim Peacock

Jim Peacock is an award-winning career development specialist and owner of Peak-Careers. He has more than 25 years of experience giving career advisors and counselors the tools to help their clients see that they have choices and that—with a little support—they can find the work they love to do.

He is on the National Career Development Association (NCDA) registry as a Facilitating Career Development (FCD) Instructor, and is a dynamic trainer, consultant and speaker. Jim specializes in helping career development professionals improve their career advising skills for a more holistic approach to addressing the needs of their students and clients.

He received the NCDA Outstanding Career Practitioner Award in 2007 and in 2020 received the NCDA Kenneth B. Hoyt Career Practitioner Education Award. Also in 2020 (who would have thought all this good could happen in 2020!), he received the Mid-Atlantic Career Counseling Association (MACCA) Professional Contributions Award. He is currently the At-Large Trustee for the National Career Development Association Board of Directors.

Listen to this Virginia Franco Podcast who interviewed Jim on career tips, his intentional serendipity philosophy, and even talked about how to avoid the ‘vortex of negativity’ in the career development process. PODCAST

Where Jim Started

Jim knows well the winding road people can take on their way to a job doing what they most love. He started college studying forestry when an “accidental” job as resident assistant in the dorms got him excited about working with students in a college setting. He found that he loved it.

Since then, he has used his extensive career development and training skills in a wide variety of higher educations settings, from a 2-year community college and a small, 4-year liberal arts college to large public and private universities.

Where Jim Is Today

Helping career professionals with their own professional development for better client results.

These days Jim is a teacher and facilitator who is passionate about helping people find what it is they love to do—what lights them up. As the former Director of the Advising, Career and Transfer Center at Kennebec Valley Community College, he has helped hundreds of students as the campus’s career and transfer counselor and academic advisor. He has also worked part-time in the career centers at Bates College and Colby College here in Maine.

After working with college students for years, Jim decided that he could touch even more students’ lives by also providing quality professional development for people who work in the field of career counseling / coaching.

Since then, he has trained hundreds of career development professionals to improve their career coaching /counseling skills and services to better support their clients’ career decisions.

As a former academic advisor, Jim believes that career and academic advising are intertwined, that all academic advisors are also career development facilitators and that most college students need career information, but do not always know where to go to access it. He is convinced that if advisors have the right resources, they can successfully guide, nudge and support students in their journey.

7 Things You Might Not Know About Jim

1. His teaching philosophy is: “Provide people with practical quality information that they can use; make them laugh, and they will remember it.”
2. He plays hockey 2-3 times a week in the winter months.
3. He published his book on his year of travel through New Zealand and Australia, in April of 2021 and still hopes to someday get back to New Zealand.
4. As a survivor of a near-death experience, he is passionate about making his life count by impacting other people’s lives
5. He has backpacked over 1,800 miles of the Mexico-to-Canada Pacific Crest Trail and figures he will be 150 years old by the time he completes the journey 🙂
6. On a Saturday, you might find Jim hanging out with his wife: fishing, kayaking, camping, and enjoying the outdoors, or enjoying a live theater performance.
7. Jim and his wife Deborah have three grown sons and three beautiful grandchildren.