Meet Tom
Tom Brickley is a member of the Greenbelt Alliance Board of Directors.
Born and raised just outside of Boston, Mass., Tom Brickley moved to the Bay Area in 1978 transferring from Colorado University in Boulder to attend the University of California at Berkeley, where he met his future wife, Mary Birthistle. After graduating with a degree in history, he attended the Pepperdine School of Law in Malibu, Calif.
Upon leaving Pepperdine, Mary and Tom traveled for two years, spending most of their time in Australia and Asia. While traveling, they had the opportunity to create their own business in Sydney, Australia, taking advantage of several consumer opportunities by opening a retail store catering to the fast-growing aerobics industry in the early ’80s. Tom has spent most of his career in finance where he spent several years working with very high-net-worth individuals helping create Family Office groups for both Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo.
Married for 30 years, Tom has two daughters: Kate and Elizabeth. Kate recently graduated from Colorado University in Boulder and is now working in Los Angeles for the prestigious broker, Hilton and Hyland. Liz is now a junior at UCLA studying International Business. Tom’s wife, Mary, is a Managing Director at First Republic Bank.
In 2003, Tom’s brother-in-law passed away at 50 from a massive heart attack. He had started Media Net Link in 1996 to take advantage of the growing opportunities happening on the internet. In 2003, there were 25 employees working for Media Net Link and with the death of their CEO and founder, there was little in terms of succession planning given that the owner’s son, Tom’s nephew, was only 24 at the time. Tom left his position to come in to Media Net Link to help the company survive and continue to prosper.
Outside of his career and his efforts to raise a family of two daughters in the Bay Area, Tom has spent time engaging with several causes and not-for-profits including Chase the Blues, the Billy Burchard Foundation, and various education bond measure campaigns. Tom has also spent years involved in his local community coaching various sports teams; volunteering as a parent for school projects, especially earthquake preparedness for grammar schools and their students; and helping out various other efforts geared towards making Piedmont a better place to live and raise a family.