So who is the “real” Jim Kissane?

Jim Kissane is an energetic, well-experienced author and industrial history storyteller who brings the real stories of working America to life for today’s audiences.

Author and historian

Jim Kissane is an author, historian, and storyteller who brings America’s industrial era and its working people to life on stage and on the page. Drawing on decades in industry, technology, ministry, and community leadership, he now leads storytelling programs, nonprofits, and online communities that help audiences see how past struggles, present choices, and future possibilities are all part of the same story.

Community and nonprofit leadership

For decades, Jim worked in and around complex systems: industrial operations, telecom networks, software and training companies, and executive‑level consulting. Those years honed skills that rarely make it onto résumés: reading a room quickly, translating between technical jargon and everyday language, calming people in crisis, and quietly helping leaders make better choices.
Today, Jim serves as executive director of Suncoast Storytellers in the Tampa Bay area, where he leads a nonprofit dedicated to oral storytelling, literacy, and belonging. He designs and hosts workshops, story swaps, story slams, and public awareness programs that help kids, elders, and “ordinary” neighbors claim their place in the narrative, often partnering with libraries, museums, and community groups across Florida.

Spiritual and pastoral work

Jim also serves on the board and as treasurer of Artists Standing Strong Together (ASST), a national network where he blends financial and strategic acumen with a background in ministry and spiritual direction. In meetings and planning calls, he offers both hard‑nosed fiduciary oversight and soft‑spoken pastoral care to artists and storytellers navigating uncertain times.
Beyond formal roles, he has long worked with faith‑based job‑seekers groups and community circles, helping people reframe their life stories during seasons of transition. That same pastoral sensibility shows up in the way he listens to tellers, audiences, and partners—treating every story as both a personal testimony and a small piece of the historical record.

Story of Industrial America

As an author and performer, Jim is best known for his Story of Industrial America work, which brings the 1850s–1950s industrial era to life through character‑driven narratives rooted in family and community experience. His essays and live performances connect those histories to the present: the ways working people are still exploited, the rise of authoritarian politics, and the everyday choices that either resist or enable that drift.

Whether he is on stage at a literacy festival, coaching nervous first‑time tellers at a story slam, working with people who are “in‑between jobs,” or holding space for exhausted artists online, Jim shows up as what he has always been at heart: a working storyteller, still fully in the match and nowhere near “retired.”