Meet Tom Egan of FSL (Foundation for Senior Living)

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tom Egan.

Tom, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Tom Egan is President and CEO of Foundation for Senior Living (FSL), located in Phoenix, AZ. Tom has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Bowling Green State University and a Master of Arts in Education, Marriage and Family Therapy from The University of Akron. Tom has spent more than 20 years working in not-for-profit health and social service organizations beginning his career at Cleveland Healthcare for the Homeless in Cleveland, OH. Once in Arizona, Tom spent 12 years as Director of Program Operations at Catholic Charities of Arizona, where he oversaw $10M of programs as well as Marketing and Development for the entire organization. In 2011, Tom accepted the position of President and CEO at Esperanca, a non-profit international public health organization based in Phoenix. At Esperanca, Tom was responsible for all fundraising and programmatic operations to provide hope for families in the poorest communities of the world. In 2015, Tom began his position as President and CEO of FSL. FSL is the fourth largest healthcare non-profit in Arizona, providing community-based health and social services as well as energy-efficient, affordable housing since 1974. Tom is a graduate of Valley Leadership, Class of 35. Through this network of Valley leaders, Tom has lent his knowledge to other non-profit, government and corporations to address various needs in our community. Tom has served as the Board Chair for ONE – Organization for Nonprofit Executives for six years. In this role, he has helped to provide professional growth opportunities for Arizona’s nonprofit leaders. In his role as board chair, he researched and integrated best practices in regards to board structure for ONE’s governing board. Currently, he serves on Mayor Stanton’s developing an age friendly community taskforce, and the Board of Directors for Resilient Me a local organization helping youth who age out of the Foster Care System. In the past, he has served on local and national taskforces that deal with poverty reduction, child welfare, domestic minor sex trafficking and international human trafficking.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
In my first week of work at FSL, I had a meeting with our banker that I thought was a meet and greet with the new leader. Fairly early in our first meeting, he asked me, “So how quickly are you going to turn this organization around?” I thought to myself “turn around”, I was told the organization was in great shape. I quickly found out that we had some challenges that we needed to overcome. I worked with the senior leadership team to develop a plan to close a budget gap that included half of our deficit being met by reducing expenses and the other half by increasing revenue. It took us about nine months to get through that difficult time and we have been on an upward trajectory ever since.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about FSL – what should we know?
Since 1974, FSL has been providing home and community-based services to help families with issues such as health, hunger, aging, illness, loneliness and substandard housing. We’re committed to improving the quality of life for individuals and caregivers in Arizona. Our team is ready to help Arizonans manage the aging process by providing resources, education and support. I am most proud of my team’s willingness to first ask, “How can we help”? We know that when facing huge challenges like aging, healthcare and housing that we cannot tackle these alone. If we ask how we can help, then we can connect them to the proper service whether that is something that we do or someone in the community does.

What are your plans for the future? What are you looking forward to or planning for – any big changes?
One of the things we are best known for is the development and management of affordable housing particularly for seniors. In the past ten years, the overall population of seniors aged 65 and older increased by 25 percent nationwide, while the number of seniors paying more than half of their household income towards rent and utilities went up by 35 percent. There is a tremendous need for affordable senior housing in our community and our country. We are committed to continuing to develop new affordable housing options every year and our goal in the next five years is to have over 1000 units of affordable housing in Arizona.

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