Volunteer leader cherishes life-changing UC relationships

Authentic leaders will freely admit that becoming a champion for great causes doesn’t happen solely through their own efforts, and Tom Carleton is no exception.

Carleton understands the good fortune and great people that have surrounded and supported him since the day over 35 years ago he decided to become a UC student. And he credits a pair of UC family members for shaping his opportunity to lift others as they travel their own Bearcat journeys. One was a professor who helped orient his personal life and professional self, the other a fellow alumni volunteer leader who offered Tom wise counsel and a tremendous example. As such, this is the story of the power of the relationships that organically develop throughout the UC community.

Like many teens of similar upbringings, Carleton thought his ideal college destination would be somewhere affordable but not too close to home. Hence, from Ashtabula in the extreme northeast corner of Ohio to the University of Cincinnati in the opposite corner.

“A high school friend who was two years older than me became the drum major for the Bearcat Band,” Tom recalls. “I took a few trips down to see him even before I was really thinking about college. I had a lot of fun, and as my time approached, UC met my qualifications of being in-state but far away — and it just felt right to me.”

That gut feeling would alter his life completely. He would soon wind up in the same communications major and “Careers in Communications” class as Cincinnati native Christine Crosier, under the tutelage of young professor Lisa Newman. Each woman would become an enduring figure in Tom’s life — Lisa as a sterling example of what a college professor should be and a future inspiration to help others, and Chris as his wife and partner in his energizing work in his adopted hometown.

Chris graduated with her communications degree in 1990, Tom followed a year later. He worked for a while in the food service industry, most notably for Nabisco and Rubbermaid, before pursuing his true calling. One of Tom’s Beta Theta Pi fraternity brothers had contracted chronic lymphocytic leukemia and the Carletons began volunteering with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) in Cincinnati to fund-raise and assist the family with their financial challenges. He then realized that more truly meaningful career work beckoned him — “something bigger than me, that would help humankind” — and that he’d already come to know and deeply respect LLS’s work.

“It was an easy choice, because LLS funds research, patient services, advocacy efforts — they cover the spectrum,” Tom says. “Then one evening as we were volunteering at an LLS event at the aquarium, I caught up with the executive director in the freight elevator and asked him, ‘How do I become employed with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society? I’m really enjoying volunteering but I need a bit more.’"

Carleton would be richly rewarded for seizing that 2006 moment. He was initially tasked with participating in an LLS event which was very successful, he had a tremendous experience in the process (“I saw how good people are”), and soon he joined the LLS staff. In that first year he managed “Light The Night,” the annual LLS community gathering that honors those touched by blood cancers.

“One of the first people they sent me to see was this guy at Great American Insurance who was a huge LLS advocate, as he had lost his mother-in-law to lymphoma,” Tom says. “The VP, Internal Audit, a pretty stern dude, and I’d be lying if I said the situation wasn’t a little intimidating.”

Innately driven to enhance the connection between alumni and their university, Carleton feels he’s precisely where he’s supposed to be right now, and he’s thriving on the energy of the team and the task. This spring, he and Chris hosted a reception for the board’s executive committee and the 2021 and 2022 class of new trustees — a warm welcome and exclamation point on the return to in-person gatherings for a group dependent on camaraderie and trust.

“We had to do the virtual thing for most of my first two years, and it was fine, but our first in-person meeting was this April and it was fantastic,” Tom says. “The energy was amazing. And our committee is great. It was so easy to slide in with [Alumni Association Committee chair] Ruthie Keefe and [Chief Alumni Officer] Jen Heisey, two people I know extremely well. Ironically, Ruthie had been the LLS board president just prior to my starting there, and Jen and I had worked together during my previous UCAA service. It’s just been a blessing to come back to this part of the university and be involved at a somewhat higher level and do what we can to make a difference.”

He feels particularly good about how the UC Alumni Celebration has innovatively recognized its group of honorees the past two springs through dynamic downtown murals, and a recent project in which a growing sample of UC’s “Notable Alumni” are captured on a new website.

“Learning about these dedicated alumni who pioneered brilliant breakthroughs and achieved so much gives you a whole new appreciation for the university and the type of people UC has produced over the years,” Tom says.

Typically, such passion for your school also wants to be expressed through tangible support, however you can lend it. For many years, Tom and Chris found themselves back in their friend Lisa Newman’s classroom as alumni, acting on Newman’s open invitation to share career lessons they’d learned — he as a nonprofit executive, she as a partner at Truepoint Wealth Counsel in her Wealth Advisor role — with each new cohort of Communications-major Bearcats. One such visit a decade ago proved transformational.

Starting the Lisa H. Newman Scholarship is a significant, but far from the only, example of how the Carletons have been creative in converting their desires into financial support for fellow Bearcats. And while his passion reaches across the entire UC landscape, the executive director of LLS’s Ohio River Valley Region is notably enthusiastic around where his professional work intersects with the university’s.

“I’m really excited about the direction of UC Health and, in particular, to get Dr. John Byrd to come here,” Tom says, referring to last year’s appointment of the new chair of UC’s Department of Internal Medicine. “He’s one of the smartest, most highly respected doctors in my world of blood cancer. World renowned. To bring him here is a stake-in-the-ground moment.”

Tom Carleton sees a very personal twist to what has happened in his lifelong relationship with UC. He and Chris learned early in their marriage that they couldn’t have children. “Everyone around us seemed to be starting families, so that was a hard thing to go through,” he admits. But it would prove to be a sign that a different kind of family plan would unfold for them. Through their commitment, philanthropy and hands-on involvement, it seems they were meant to “have children” in a different way — through uplifting so many lives within their expansive UC family that, in truth, they’ll never know the full, ongoing result of their vision and generosity. That’s something to which Lisa Newman and the Dobbses can relate, and it’s at the heart of why any authentic volunteer leader gets so involved in the first place.

“Tom is all in as a Bearcat,” says Kim Dobbs. “An avid ambassador for everything UC, with a positive attitude, generous heart and undying love for his alma mater.”

“We feel UC has given us so much and really made us the people we are today,” says Tom. “We’re so humbled to be able to give back to the university, whether it’s time, talent or treasure. However we can make an impact — that’s what we want to do.”