Jim Hanson

Jim has been involved in forensics for over 40 years as a competitor and as coach. As a coach, his speech and debate team won 5 squad NDPA national championships, first place CEDA team in the nation (Jessica Clarke and Adam Symonds), first place NDT speaker (Charles Olney), and first place NPDA speaker (Miranda Morton) as well as over 1000 debate awards, 167 national championship tournament elimination and qualification awards, and 500 individual speaking events awards.

Jim is also President of West Coast Publishing, another non-profit, dedicated to providing outstanding topic materials and textbooks for debate and individual events. Jim is working to make Climb the Mountain a program that encourages and supports coaches, students, and judges to be the best that they can be. Students Jim has worked with through Climb the Mountain have been in late elimination rounds at Stanford and Georgetown, won the Korean and Japan national championships, as well as multiple awards at tournaments in the Northwest.