Tom Karl was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1951 and grew up in the suburbs, observing and predicting the weather using homemade instruments with his father.  He attended Northern Illinois University and graduated in 1973 with a major in meteorology and a minor in mathematics.  He attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin and studied under Werner Schwerdtfeger.  After a brief TV/Radio weather forecasting position at the beginning of his career Tom joined the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 1975. He has had a variety of assignments in NOAA including Senior Scientist (1992-1998), Director of the National Climatic Data Center (1998-2015) and Director of the National Centers for Environmental Information (2015-2016). He also taught Statistics at the University of North Carolina, Asheville 1986-87. In 2010 he was asked by the President’s Science Advisor to Chair the $2.5b US Global Change Research Program’s Subcommittee on Global Change Research. He has continued in that position 2010-2016. There he was responsible for ensuring the delivery to Congress of an interagency Global Change Research Plan, Assessments, and annual Progress Reports for all agencies engaged in global change research. In August of 2016 he retired from federal service after a 41-year career. He recently retired from being President and CEO of Climate and Weather, L.L.C