S4:E5 | Jim Stevenson

Creative to Reflect His Creator
When you listen to Jim Stevenson’s story, it’s easy to wonder, “Is there anything this guy can’t do?” His first career move was a straightaway into the fast-paced and frenetic world of NASCAR, then Indy Car, racing, where he secured sponsorships from big-name companies and corporations.

Jim is also a singer-songwriter who recorded albums and performed 40-50 gigs a year as one-half of a soft rock duo with Tim Farrel. One of the high points was opening for legendary rock band Chicago when they performed at the Polaris Amphitheater (now Germain Amphitheater) in Columbus, Ohio.  

And now in his latest adventure, Jim co-founded and serves as Director of the International Center for Creativity (ICC) in Dublin, Ohio, which houses the last two years of Cedarville’s Innovative and Industrial Design (IID) program. ICC offers a nontraditional learning space where junior and senior IID students let their minds soar, imagining out-of-the-box transformative solutions to real-world problems.

On the side, just because God has gifted Jim with a creative and dexterous mind, he and ICC co-founder Tom Balliet built and then designed the interior of a retreat home on Mt. Desert Island in Maine.

“To be creative, you need to know the Creator,” Jim shares during the podcast. “Our biggest challenge is to make sure we’re building kingdom builders, and they can use their creativity and their innovation to reflect Him, to be creative image-bearers of God.”

In addition to the undergraduate IID program, M.B.A. in Innovation and Entrepreneurship graduate students also take classes through the ICC.

Jim serves on the board of the Kosovo Leadership Academy and sends Cedarville IID students and instructors to this formerly war-torn nation in the Balkans to teach creative design processes and principles.