Four decades at ground zero
Tom started his career at Westinghouse, back when "computers" meant mainframes and punch cards. Then the Macintosh arrived — and he watched personal computing change everything. He didn't just watch. He jumped in.
When the internet came along, Tom saw it before most people had email addresses. He launched his own internet marketing business and ran it for 15 years — building, selling, and learning at the pace only entrepreneurs know.
From there, the journey wove through consulting at McKinsey, leading teams at Advance Auto Parts, rising to Senior Director of UX and then Director of Product Management. Every role, every company, every disruption — Tom was there. Not reading about it. Living it.
The pattern he kept seeing
Personal computing. The internet. Mobile. Digital transformation. Every wave followed the same arc: a new technology appears, the early adopters figure out what it's really for, and then it changes everything for everyone.
The next useful interface is conversational. Tom recognized it early — not because of hype, but because parents already live in messages, calendars, and messy inboxes. And this time, the thing that needed simplifying was deeply personal: school emails, activity schedules, deadlines, and the overwhelming reality of modern family life.