Jim Gilliam is a geeky activist with big ideas. Shortly before the
2008 election, Jim started White House 2, a website imagining how the White House might work if
were run completely democratically by thousands of people over the
internet. He is currently turning this into a platform anyone can use
to run their government, business, non-profit or group in a radical
and fun new way.

Shortly after the Iraq war started in 2003, Gilliam hooked up with
Robert Greenwald, an award-winning filmmaker, to research Uncovered: The War on Iraq, and tell the stories of dozens of government insiders, from CIA
officers to weapons inspectors, all desperate to tell the world that
Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Released in just four short
months, the film reached millions of people worldwide without any
corporate distribution, based entirely on activists holding thousands
of free screenings in their homes, churches, and small businesses.
The grassroots political documentary was born, and Jim later
evangelized the model at numerous film festivals and created a free
web service, Brave New Theaters, enabling any filmmaker to use the same techniques to
tell stories the traditional media is too afraid to touch.

Following up on the success of Uncovered, Gilliam innovated
with Robert Greenwald's next three films, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on
Journalism, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, and Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers. Outfoxed forever branded FOX News as
Republican propaganda, severely damaging its ability to control the
news cycle and public opinion. In the two years after Wal-Mart
was released, the company completely changed its brand, logo,
tagline, and ditched its smiley mascot, a brand Gilliam turned
against them with "Evil Smiley." Iraq for Sale led to Senate hearings on war profiteering and increased oversight of military contractors. It was also the first film to ever raise a substantial portion of its funds from small donations online -- $260,000 from over 3,000 donors.

But 6 months to make a film was still too long, so in 2006, Brave New Films, a non-profit
Gilliam co-founded with Robert Greenwald and Rick Jacobs, began making short YouTube videos on a wide range of political issues, from corporate greed to health care. The Real McCain video series dominated YouTube, and was the only negative link about McCain on the first page of Google's search results. The McCain
Mansions video started a devastating political meme when
McCain couldn't remember how many houses he owned. By the 2008 election, these videos had been seen 40 million times, and Brave New Films was 1 million members strong.

Prior to his activism and filmmaking career, Gilliam worked at Lycos in
the late 90's, one of the first internet search engines. In 2000, he
launched Business.com as its Chief Technology Officer with Jake Winebaum from Disney and funding from
Primedia, Reed-Elsevier, Mort Zuckerman, and the Financial Times. The
company was sold in 2007 for $400 million to R. H. Donnelly.

Gilliam was honored in 2008 with Take Back America's second annual Maria Leavey Tribute Award for his behind-the-scenes work building the progressive movement at Brave New Films. He has fought cancer twice, and is the enormously grateful recipient of a bone marrow transplant and a double lung transplant.

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