Founder
Jimmy Vee
Jimmy Vee is a ventriloquist, magician, children’s author, entrepreneur, and archivist who has been fascinated by this art since a performer visited his elementary school.
He is not an academic who discovered ventriloquism from a distance. He is a working ventriloquist who spent decades inside the field and got tired of watching its history disappear.
The beginning
A school assembly started it. Jimmy was eight years old when a ventriloquist made a figure appear alive in front of him.
His grandmother bought him a Howdy Doody toy dummy that Christmas. He still has it.
But Jimmy did not find a real way to learn the art until he was eighteen, when a former professional ventriloquist running a puppet cart in an Orlando‑area mall pointed him toward a book.
Once the book arrived, Jimmy learned in a month.
Then came birthday parties, libraries, comedy clubs, and a scripted magic‑and‑ventriloquism show that helped pay his way through college.
Written to be performed, not recited.
Jimmy has written ten children’s books. They are funny on the page, but the page is not where they stop. They were built for voices, reactions, interruptions, and the inevitable request to read the whole thing again.
One of them, How to Make Your Sock Talk, teaches children how to begin ventriloquism. It is the book Jimmy wishes he could have found when he was eight instead of eighteen.
That book now sits at the center of the Institute’s largest ambition: one million children, one million books, one million puppets, and one million first shows.
The tenth, Look! There Are No Monsters Inside of This Book, is with its illustrator now.
Inside the field
Vent Haven ConVENTion
Executive Director in 2024 and 2025, after three years working alongside longtime director Mark Wade at the world’s longest‑running gathering devoted to ventriloquism.
Vent Haven Museum
Member of the Board of Advisors beginning in 2021.
Florida Ventriloquist Association
Jimmy helped bring the defunct Central Florida Ventriloquist Association back to life. It became the Florida Ventriloquist Association, and he has led or worked with it for more than twenty‑five years.
The Dummy Blog
For years, one of the largest collections of ventriloquism video available online, and a direct ancestor of the Archive.
Why he founded the Institute
The further Jimmy went into the field, the more often the same thing happened. Someone had a question, maybe about a figure, but nobody was sure who made it. A performer worked for decades but no one knew who they were.
Meanwhile, children were encountering ventriloquism the same way Jimmy had: by chance. Those who wanted to learn still had to work too hard to find the door.
The Institute connects those two problems.
We give people an official place to ask questions, learn, and get answers. We give the community a hub for information and a place to connect, share, and collaborate. A place to belong.
A place to preserve your legacy as a member of the ventriloquist community, and a platform to learn about the people who already have, so the past can inform and inspire the future.