James A. (Jim) Throgmorton received a B.A. in history from Notre Dame in 1966, a M.S. in community development from the University of Louisville in 1972, and a Ph.D. in urban and regional planning from UCLA in 1983. He taught urban and regional planning at the University of Iowa for 24 years until retiring as an emeritus professor in 2010. His scholarly work has focused primarily on the roles of rhetoric and persuasive storytelling in planning, especially with regard to making city-regions more just and ecologically sustainable. In his role as a scholar, he has written Planning as Persuasive Storytelling (1996), Co-Crafting the Just City (forthcoming), and dozens of articles in scholarly journals and edited books. In collaboration with Barbara Eckstein, he also co-edited Story and Sustainability (2003). As an active resident of Iowa City, Iowa, he has written dozens of op-eds for local newspapers. He served as an elected member of Iowa City’s city council from late-1993 through 1995 and again from 2012 through 2019. During the last four years of his council term he also served as mayor. As mayor, he vigorously led efforts to foster a more inclusive, just, and sustainable city.