Jim Howard is a product of California public schools. He attended UC Davis where he earned a BS in Biochemistry. He moved down the state to Los Angeles where he earned a PhD from the UCLA Department of Biological Chemistry and his medical degree from the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. He moved back to the Bay Area in 2005, where he completed a residency in General Pediatrics and fellowship in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine at UC San Francisco, and studied stem cell-based therapies for severe lung injury. He later shifted the focus of his career to clinical medicine, medical education, and quality improvement, and moved his practice to Benioff Childrenās Hospital Oakland where he is an attending physician in the intensive care unit and director of medical simulation, among other things.