Over a career spanning 25 years, Bruce James '64 (printing) founded and led 13 printing and publishing organizations, each built on an emerging new technology. The businesses varied from the Polish American Printing Co. with high-tech newspaper plants in Warsaw, Gdansk and a castle in Krakow, to Barclays Law Publishers in San Francisco, which Inc. magazine ranked for five years as one of the country's 500 fastest growing companies. 
 
Since retiring from business in 1993, he served on seven higher-education-related boards, including RIT where he is chairman-emeritus of the Board of Trustees. Additionally, in 2002 he was appointed by President George W. Bush, and confirmed by the Senate, to follow in Benjamin Franklin's footsteps as the nation's 24th Public Printer. He led the U.S. Government Printing Office through a complete transition into the digital world for which he was recognized in 2006 as the Federal Executive of the Year. 
 
Asked about the most important decision he ever made, he said it was letting go of the past. "You can't move forward and do dramatic new things unless you're willing to let go of the past and embrace the future."