Tom Knox
Tom Knox grew up in Philadelphia’s Abbotsford public housing. He is the oldest of four sons of Thomas and Margaret Knox. Tom's father was a steel worker at the nearby Midvale-Heppenstall Steel plant and his mother supplemented the family income by selling homemade pizzas to their neighbors. Tom worked to help his mother and father provide for his younger brothers by working in a nearby cotton processing plant.
Tom left high school at 16 and chose to join the Navy so that he could send a portion of his pay back to his family. After four years of service and 2 promotions, Tom left the Navy and returned to Philadelphia.
Tom started working as a door-to-door salesman, but his entrepreneurial spirit soon led elsewhere. He began creating and protecting jobs by starting his own businesses and by turning failing businesses around. Over the past three decades he has owned, managed, and sold his own software, banking, and health care insurance companies, including Disc Systems, Inc., Crusader Bank, Fidelity Insurance Group, Gimco International, and Kasser Industries. Tom rapidly developed a reputation as a tough negotiator and turnaround specialist.
In 1992, when it seemed that the city's fiscal crisis would require tax hikes or service cuts, Mayor Rendell asked Tom to help him balance the budget and help create the city’s five-year plan. Tom, who is not a career politician, asked that two conditions be met before he agreed to join then-Mayor Rendell's first mayoral cabinet as Deputy Mayor for the Office of Management and Productivity. First, Tom would accept nothing more than a salary of $1 per year. Second, Tom would leave the cabinet as soon as the budget had been balanced.
Eighteen months and $1.50 later, Tom's efforts had helped to erase a quarter-billion dollar annual budget deficit, had saved vital city services, and had prevented a major tax hike. On June 30th, 1993, the city had a budget surplus of $10 million dollars. Tom kept his promise to resign once he did his part to balance the budget and left office one week later. Tom helped eliminate wasteful spending by re-establishing a bidding process for many city contracts, consolidating and reorganizing the city's Management Information Services, and reorganizing the Office of Fleet Management. By renegotiating many of the city's leases and insurance contracts, Tom was able to save the city millions of dollars per year.
A respected leader and consensus builder, Tom helped establish the Mayor's Private Sector Task Force, a coalition of over 41 area CEO's and 300 area executives. Tom's office implemented over 150 of the Task Force's cost reduction and productivity initiatives, which resulted in an additional savings of nearly $100 million dollars per year.
On leaving city government, Tom carried his public service into the private sector when he took a job as Special Deputy Rehabilitator & Chief Executive Officer of Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Co., which had been placed in rehabilitation by the Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner. As Special Deputy Rehabilitator, Tom managed the day-to-day operations of Pennsylvania’s 5th largest insurer and implemented a series of management and productivity initiatives.
When not serving the city or the state, Tom supports the community by raising money for a number of charities and non-profit organizations, and by providing educational scholarships for more than 20 underprivileged students. Deeply committed to medicine and public health, Tom has served as a Director for the Association for Surgical Education Foundation and has supported research into the causes of and treatments for cerebral palsy.
Tom's proudest achievement is his family. Linda, his wife of 30 years, is a trustee of the Union League's Scholarship Fund, which awards $100,000 in college scholarships annually to deserving students in greater Philadelphia. Tom has two grown sons - T.J. and Brandon. Tom and Linda live in Rittenhouse Square.
Tom has never forgotten his roots in the Abbotsford housing project. He worked his way out of poverty and into the ownership of several major public and private companies. And as one of the driving forces behind the elimination of Philadelphia's quarter billion dollar deficit and economic turnaround, Tom now looks to again serve Philadelphia.