Distinguished Alumni: Jim Elliott (The Courier – DuPage College student newspaper)
Jim Elliott
Then: Sports reporter, class of ‘77
Now: Founder and President of Diveheart. Honored as the West Suburban Philanthropic Network
Humanitarian of the Year.
Jim Elliott attended COD as a journalism major, covering the state championship-winning hockey team for the Courier. After graduation he was offered a job at the Chicago Tribune and moved to radio and television. Elliott followed a 20- year dream in 2001 when he founded his non-profit, Diveheart, where he works every day without collecting a salary. Elliott is a noted Rotarian and has been featured in Money magazine, Success magazine, CNN, ABC7 and more.
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C: What was the beginning of Diveheart like and what have you worked on?
J: I did it because my daughter is blind, and downhill skiing turned her life around. I’ve been guiding and teaching
blind skiers since the ‘80s. I saw a lot of people’s lives build self-confidence and self-esteem, and skiing did it. I
thought, ‘If skiing can do this, I know what diving can do because there’s no gravity.’
I was mainly thinking of people with physical disabilities. I learned how to dive here at COD. I thought it would be
another arrow in my quiver as a journalist. It’s the closest thing there is to flying and being an astronaut. So, I started
working with people with disabilities and had no idea it was going to go where it’s gone.
We are doing research with university medical centers all over the country. We found there’s an extra output of
serotonin in the human body if we get people deep enough. It helps with pain management and anxiety. People with
chronic spinal pain for 10 or 15 years, if we get them deep enough, they can be pain free for up to three weeks.
We did the first study of autism and scuba therapy with Northwestern University. It’s pretty exciting. We became a
training program. I just got back from Malaysia yesterday, and we were training people there, then took people with
disabilities on a trip as well. We teach instructors all over the world. We’ve done programs in China, Australia, Israel,
the UK, all over the Caribbean, hundreds of cities in the US. We’ve spun off 25 other non-profits to do similar stuff
that we do.
I used all the skills I learned at COD as a journalist and also throughout my media career. I use all those tools to help
make things happen with Diveheart. It’s been very exciting.