James Powers
Chairman, President & CEO
iLinc Communications
Dr. James Powers, Jr. has served as Chairman, President and CEO of iLinc Communications (AMEX:ILC) since December 1998. Dr. Powers is responsible for the overall business strategy and vision that enabled the company to prosper in the extremely competitive Web and audio conferencing industry. iLinc is consistently recognized as a leading provider of Web-based collaboration technologies. Most recently in 2006, Forrester Research
named iLinc as one of the top four hosted Web conferencing services among a peer group of WebEx, Microsoft and Adobe.
iLinc initially went public in March of 1998 as Pentegra Dental Group (AMEX:PEN), as a dental practice management company with 155 doctors and 1,000 employees operating in 31 states. When the dental and physician practice management sector went through a severe down turn, Dr. Powers sold the practice assets while keeping the public company entity. He then acquired 5 Web-based training companies between 2002 and 2004 and capitalized
on the organization’s expertise in training and technology to transition the company into the growing Web-based training market. Since the successful transition into the Web-based training and communications market, Dr. Powers has led the company to achieve a 40% CAGR over the past 4 fiscal years—out-pacing the industry while maintaining profitability for the past five quarters.
Prior to joining the Company, Dr. Powers was co-Founder and Chairman of Clearidge, Inc., a privately held bottled water company in Nashville, Tennessee from 1993 to 1999. He led Clearidge through 13 acquisitions over three years to become one of the largest independent bottlers in the Southeast. He was also a Founder and Director of Barnhill's Buffet, Inc., a chain of 50 restaurants in the Southeast that was generating in excess of $100 Million in annual revenue when
it was sold in 2005. Dr. Powers received a Doctor of Dental Surgery Degree from The University of Tennessee, a B.S. from The University of Memphis and an MBA from Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management.