Primary Job Title CEO Primary Organization 
iHigh
Gender Male
Jim Host has been Chairman of Lexington, KY based Volar Video since its inception in November 2012. Prior to this he served in the same capacity with iHigh.com since November 2010.
He is the former chairman and CEO of Host Communications, Inc. which he founded in Lexington, Kentucky in 1972. He stepped down as CEO in 2001, but retirement from
the company he founded did not slow him down. He served as Secretary of Commerce for the Commonwealth of Kentucky under Governor Ernie Fletcher for two years, retiring in October 2005. Following that appointment, Host was the founding chairman of the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games, which were held in Kentucky in September 2010. From 2005-2012 he was Chairman of the Louisville Arena Authority which opened the $238 Million KFC YUM Center in downtown Louisville in October 2010. The 14,000 sq. foot lobby of the facility is named "Host Hall" in his honor.
In 2011, Host was named the Chairman of the Bluegrass Economic Advancement Movement (BEAM), an economic partnership between Louisville and Lexington, by Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and Lexington Mayor Jim Gray. Retiring as Chairman in 2012, he remains a member of the Board.
Host grew up in Ashland, KY and is a University of Kentucky graduate. He played professional baseball after receiving one of UK’s first baseball scholarships. He began his professional career in radio with WVLK in Lexington, then with Procter and Gamble in sales and spent the early 1960’s with his own real estate, building, and insurance company as well as doing play-by-play for several networks broadcasting UK sports. In 1967, at age 29, Host became the youngest member of Governor Louie B. Nunn’s cabinet as commissioner of the Department of public information and then as commissioner of the Department of Parks. He was the Republican nominee for Lieutenant Governor in 1971, but lost in the general election.
Host returned to Lexington in 1972 and opened Jim Host & Associates, which began rapid development in 1974 with two contracts: a basketball and football radio agreement with the University of Kentucky and an executive management relationship with the National Tour Association. Host began a long-standing business relationship with the National Collegiate Athletic Association in 1975, handling all its radio, publishing, and corporate sports marketing for more than 25 years, and is personally credited with implementing the first collegiate corporate partner program with the NCAA in 1983.
