A Los Angeles native and graduate of Northwestern University, Tom’s first broadcast job was as a 15-year-old news assistant and traffic reporter at a Los Angeles radio station owned by singing cowboy star Gene Autry. After college he was a TV reporter in Sacramento and worked for ABC in Chicago and Los Angeles before founding his first company, a local news service in Southern California. He took a break from broadcasting to serve as campaign manager for his friend Jerry Brown’s winning race for governor of California. Tom later served as chairman of the California Air Resources Board, Secretary of Environmental Quality for California and as a member of the governing board of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency. He started Americom Broadcasting, now called Reno Media Group, in Reno in 1982. The company later operated stations in Las Vegas and Fresno before selling those to concentrate in Northern Nevada. A Reno resident, Tom is married with three children, two step-children and five grandchildren.