James Sheets (Ph.D., J.D., and M.A.) is an experienced multi-tasked professional and has over twenty years of experience working at various levels in business and education and as an ex-pat teaching business systems and law at the global level. His recent research sorties included data privacy and international law.
He taught business management for several years at the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business as well as law and related social science course as a faculty or guest lecturer in universities at the global level, including Boston University, the American University of Bulgaria, the American University of Bosnia, Prince Sultan University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Jinan University in China.
Sheets has a continued interest in international law and has a forthcoming peer review article on the use of force under the Law of Nations as articulated by the Dutch legal jurist, Hugo Von Grotius. He has also published an article under trade cover on international legal education, “Observations on the Chinese Legal Profession." His Ph.D. examined the development of the social sciences within the context of civil society and was favorably reviewed by a major publishing house and is now in final draft.
James Sheets is a nontraditional professional who self-financed his graduate and legal education, receiving his Ph.D.in social sciences from the University of Rochester in New York. He was awarded a Carnegie Fellowship and spent a year at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland as a post-doctorate.
He considers learning a life process and sees himself as a lifelong learner who excels in cross-generational and cross-cultural environments. While in Saudi Arabia, his work was distinctive in teaching Shariah compliance within a curriculum which embraced a global perspective. His work in China embraced a similar inclusiveness bringing the Chinese civil code and domestic law of companies and joint ventures within the framework of international contract law. His work in Bosnia and Serbia after the conflict had a similar inclusiveness, straddling the conflicted divide between the Bosnians and Serbs, fostering societal harmonization.
At the local level he has assisted recent immigrants within the legal system and in related family and community matters. He has worked with nonprofits and those who have restricted access to the judicial system, helping on various residential, probate, and immigration matters in the Des Moines area. He is also a committed cyclist and jogger, enjoys playing jazz and classical guitar, a member of the Greenwood Neighborhood Association, and is an active supporter of the YMCA.
He began his career teaching at the secondary level in Minnesota and Wisconsin and possesses various licenses in education and bar admissions before the state and federal courts in several states.