I grew up in a large family, the son of a career Air Force Officer and Civil Engineer.  My dad retired from the service and brought the family back to his home town of Hartington, Nebraska, population 1,500.  There I finished high school.  I owe my entrepreneurial spirit to a family heritage of banking and business development manifest in my dad who built several businesses after he retired.

Dad wanted us all to grow up and be engineers but with several engineers already in the family I made my break for the Illinois Institute of Technology, Institute of Design, in Chicago.  There I got my BS in Design and majored in Photography.  After working at the top commercial photo lab in Chicago as well as one of the largest commercial photo studios in the city I eventually moved my wife and young daughter east to Worcester Massachusetts.  There I began working as a commercial photographer for a retail advertising studio.  Two years later I started my own business doing commercial location photography for a wide variety of agency and corporate clients.

I worked for fifteen years as a photographer and with the addition of two sons, my wife and I decided I would go back to school to get my MBA.  It was about that time that I had discovered the University of Phoenix Online MBA program and in 1997 I began my studies.  The online program exposed me to the tremendous opportunity wrapped up in the Internet.  I could see myself satisfying my creative, analytical and entrepreneurial interests in this blossoming industry.

Since I graduated I’ve worked for several online businesses developing my career, growing professionally and meeting some really great people along the way.  If you’re interested, I welcome the opportunity to network with you via Linkedin.

This blog is intended to be a place where I can share my interests and passions for online marketing, innovation and entrepreneurship and perhaps inspire yours as well. I welcome your comments and feedback and am eager to share a dialogue on a wide variety of topics.

By the way, in my first job out of graduate school I worked for Alpha Shirt Company and friends there coined the nickname and title of this blog, “Dot Tom”.

Thanks for visiting!

Cheers, Tom Stockwell