For over 30 years, Jim Strohecker has focused on integrating fundamental principles from global healing and wisdom traditions into mainstream cultural awareness, with the intention of creating a "culture of wellness". An authority in the field of natural health and wellness and a pioneer in e-health, Jim is co-founder of HealthWorld Online (www.healthy.net), the first Internet network focused on alternative medicine, wellness, and healthy living.

Recently, Jim co-created the online Wellness Inventory, a holistic assessment and life-balance program based on the work of wellness pioneer, John W. Travis, MD, MPH, that is now licensed in the healthcare, spa, corporate and coaching markets worldwide, as well as the Wellness Inventory Certification Training. He also co-founded the first business-to-business Internet network for the natural products industry.

Jim brings a deep, personal commitment to the vision and mission of HealthWorld Online as well as the to the success and growth of the company. Co-creator of a revolutionary vehicle for bringing timeless, life-enhancing – but largely hidden – knowledge to individuals throughout the world, Jim is an author, holistic thinker and network creator. He has a philosopher's introspective bent and a visionary's dedication to bringing transformational ideas to the world.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate in Anthropology, Jim has long nurtured a passion to understand the human condition, and the spiritual dimension of human evolution. His quest for deeper meaning first arose during his childhood growing up in a "secret city" that had been built for the Manhattan Project during World War II to produce the first atomic bomb . His quest was deepened while a young college student through his experiences living and working in the jungles of the Yucatan Peninsula amidst the ruins of the ancient Mayan civilization, as a member of two National Geographic archaeological expeditions investigating the decline and disappearance of the Maya.

He later declined a grant from the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, where he planned to explore the evolutionary significance of the mystical experience under the guidance of the renowned scholar/mystic Mircea Eliade, to dedicate eight years to an intensive pursuit of spiritual knowledge. In India he undertook an intensive and prolonged study and practice of yoga, meditation and spiritual philosophy in a monastic setting.

It was in India that his lifelong passion for wellness, healthy living and natural healing was stimulated through his in-depth exposure to yoga, meditation and other ageless wellness practices, as well as Ayurveda, detoxification, herbal medicine, homeopathy, and and a wide range of somatic, mind/body and natural therapies.

In the early 1990s Jim had a vision of creating a global database of the leading research and information on natural medicine, combined with traditional forms of medicine from around the world. He saw this as the basis for creating a "global" medicine that blended ancient healing traditions, spirituality and natural medicine with the best of scientific western medicine. This, he felt, could help alleviate suffering caused by the lack of direct and easy access to information on natural health and other viable alternatives to institutionalized conventional medical approaches. This vision led to the creation of HealthWorld Online.

Jim was founding vice-president of Future Medicine Publishing where he served as Executive Editor of the first edition of the classic Alternative Medicine: The Definitive Guide, a book that has become the gold standard for natural health information with over 750,000 copies in print.

He co-authored or collaborated on more than a dozen books on natural health and wellness as well as human potential, including:

• Natural Healing for Depression: Solutions from the World's Great Health Traditions and Practitioners, Putnam Perigee, 1999
  
• You Don't Have to Die: Unraveling the AIDS Myth, a book on natural medicine and AIDS (1994)
  
• Whole Home Health Care: A Complete Resource Guide for Families, Patients and Caregivers. (1991).

Jim has served on the Board of Directors of American University of Complementary Medicine and the Institute of Natural Medicine, and served on the Presidential Advisory Board of Bastyr University, the first fully-accredited university of natural medicine. He has also served on the advisory boards of the Nourish America, the National Wellness, Prevention and Fitness Congress, the Academy for Guided Imagery, and numerous other organizations. He has also served as an Associate Editor of Total Health Magazine.

In the process of launchiing HealthWorld Jim created strategic relationships with over 40 professional associations, consumer health groups, trade groups and educational institutions , as well as a global network of relationships with leaders in the field of natural medicine. Over the years he has consulted with leading-edge thinkers in the fields of natural health, psychology, human potential, and organizational development.

He has advised publishers, educational institutions and companies worldwide, including England, Germany, India and China, as well as companies in the U.S. such as Walt Disney Imagineering. In building a global market for the Wellness Inventory, Jim is creating strategic relationships in the healthcare, worksite wellness, spa, coaching, fitness, religious, and academic sectors. The Wellness Inventory Certification Training has had students from 12 countries throughout the world.

The Internet's inherent capability to create an electronic global village is the technology that has made his vision a reality. HealthWorld Online and the Wellness Inventory have become his vehicles for creating a worldwide "Culture of Wellness".