Tom joined Wheeler Kearns Architects in 1991 and became a principal in 1995. For the firm, Tom has headed several large residential projects as well as the Hamill Family Play Zoo at the Brookfield Zoo, the Lake Forest Montessori School at Prairie Crossing, and the Arts and Communications Center at Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Illinois. He has also worked on several high-school projects for the Noble Network of Charter Schools, including the ITW David Speer Academy which involved transforming a former lumberyard building into a STEM high school with 31 classrooms and 5 laboratory teaching spaces.
Tom graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture, cum laude, from the University of Cincinnati in 1983, where he received the AIA Cincinnati Chapter Design Excellence Award. He continued his education at Yale University and earned a Master of Architecture in 1990.
Between college and graduate studies, Tom worked for five years with R.M. Kliment & Frances Halsband Architects in New York City. While there, as Project Architect, he was responsible for the design of a three floor, 54,000 sf, interior project for a New York Advertising Agency with an emphasis on creative ingenuity; private residences in Rye and Pound Ridge, New York; as well as assisting with design for a Town Hall in Salisbury, Connecticut; and university laboratory/teaching facilities at Princeton and Dartmouth.
During graduate school, Tom was a teaching assistant for architectural historian Vincent Scully and worked during the summer at the New York office of Agrest and Gandelsonas assisting with construction detail drawings for two private residences. After he graduated, he worked in New Haven, Connecticut with Robert Orr Associates where, as Project Architect, he was responsible for private residences in Connecticut, Kansas City, and Aspen, Colorado.
Tom has served numerous times as visiting juror at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Illinois Institute of Technology, University of Notre and the Marwen Foundation and has guest lectured at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a registered architect in New York and Illinois, a member of the American Institute of Architects and a LEED accredited professional.
He has served 15 years on the Roscoe Village Neighbors Zoning Committee where he is the acting co-chairman and regularly coordinates zoning and land use efforts with the Aldermen of the neighborhood wards. Tom’s wife, Sarah, also trained as an architect, is a principal at Gensler and currently leads their health care design practice as the co-managing director of the Chicago office. They have one daughter, Jane Eloise.