James Buckley was raised in the Philadelphia suburbs (Delaware County) and received a BS in Economics from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in 1986. He completed his MBA at Temple University in 1991.

He began his career with BDP International in 1987 and was there during many of its years of phenomenal growth; he served in roles on both the export and import side of the business and rose to the position of regional vice president/general manager; his philosophy of customer advocacy and passion for the business of transportation was molded at BDP

Buckley moved to Fritz Companies in Dallas in 2001 and played a major role in the rework of the Center of Excellence attempted by Fritz in the late 1990’s. When the company merged with UPS, his contract was paid and he started Zena Logistics as an agency for Landstar Logistics in 2003. He transferred his agency to Excel Tranportation in 2010 which eventually evolved into Mode Transportation; he holds a small equity position in its parent company Mode Holdings LLC; Zena Logistics started with support of freight forwarders with port pickups and deliveries and later evolved into an LTL specialist and provider of support for the oilfield products and materials handling industries.

He is past president of the Transportation Club of Dallas Fort Worth and the North Texas Roundtable of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals. He holds a customs broker license issued by the United States Department of Homeland Security.

He has served as an adjunct faculty member of the Department of Marketing and Logistics at the University of North Texas where he taught the core transportation course. He has traveled to fifty states and six continents.

He has benefited from some superb mentors over the years and is profoundly grateful to all of them.

He is married to language professor and translator Paola Tettamanzi; together they have five adult children and one grandchild. He holds conversational proficiency in French and Italian.