Sarah Douglass
UNIVERSITY, Miss. - John B. Thomas, a University of Mississippi alum, spoke Wednesday with students about his journey from a shoestring budget to private planes.
After graduating second in his class in 1985, Thomas has succesfully navigated his way to an impressive career.
"My career has evolved quite a bit," Thomas said before diving into his extensive job history.
Starting in journalism, Thomas dabbled in everything from Meredith Corporation, Better Homes and Garden magazine, and is now vice president for investor relations and public affairs for Abott, a global, broad-based health care company.
Along with being the vice president for investors and public affairs, Thomas is president of the Abbott Fund, the philanthropic arm of the company. Helping others seems to be the norm for Thomas. Last year he and his wife, Mary E. Thomas, started the Thomas Family Scholarship Endowment, giving $100,000 to a full-time student majoring in integrated marketing communications or journalism at Ole Miss.
Thomas described his own challenging job search in an unstable job market and explained his unique way of overcoming unemployment after college.
"When I graduated it was a pretty bad job market, and we didn't have any job offers," he said. "So a friend and I who were in the service journalism program together decided to take matters into our own hands and we started our own magazine and newspaper, The Oxford Times."
Thomas humored the class with his success story on becoming the "anti-Oxford Eagle."
"Yeah...we took on the Oxford Eagle, and that was a tough assignment," he said. [We] thought we could take on the world.... Between us, we had $500. We were too young to know what we were getting into, which was probably a good thing. We had no fear."
Thomas has traveled far from his closely budgeted days.
Today, Thomas has a list of "war stories" about being in the middle of multi-billion dollar transactions, taking private planes to Callifornia, and working with CEOs and CFOs on their ways to better companies.
Thomas credits the University of Mississippi Department of Journalism for his success. While looking back on his days at Ole Miss, he said it was a no-brainer when it came to choosing the best educational fit for him.
"My father and I came down and visited with some of the journalism people, toured Rowan Oak and that was all she wrote," Thomas said.
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