James has been Head of Creative at start-up studio Betaworks since 2103. His role is to explore creative opportunities for betaworks products and tell the betaworks brand story. Some of the betaworks brands include the no.1 game, Dots, which has been downloaded over 90 million times and won a One Show pencil for a campaign with GE. Other betaworks brands include Giphy, Poncho, Digg and Instapaper. James also produces ‘The Intern’ a hit podcast about working in betaworks and the tech world.

James joined betaworks from the Emmy winning production company Tool of North America where he was an Interactive Director. There he created the ‘Help I have the Flu’ facebook app, which appeared on both Jimmy Kimmel and Jay Leno and won a One Show Entertainment Silver pencil and the Nature Valley ‘Quietest Show on Earth’ program that won the audience award at SXSW.

Before joining Tool James was a multi award winning Creative Director in the advertising industry. He won the first ever Cannes Gold Lion for Mobile with a Band Aid augmented reality app featuring The Muppets, as well another Cannes Gold for Mobile in 2014 with Google. He was the Creative Director for the London based agency Dare; sold for $50m in 2008 and named Digital Agency of the Decade by Campaign.

In 2010 he signed an innovative agency sponsorship deal with TechStars New York and continues to be a TechStars mentor and an advisor for a number of start-ups including ADstruc; a digital marketplace for outdoor media. He is also a mentor for R/GA’s accelerator program and taught a module for Google’s 30 Weeks program.

James is also known for founding Celebrity Ping Pong magazine in which he interviews celebrities like Susan Sarandon and Judah Friedlander over a game of table tennis and launching Thompson Punke the world’s only badass ping pong clothing line. And he just wrote, produced and shot, Bury, a hipster horror movie made entirely on Go Pro cameras. He likes being busy.