Tom Tripp was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1942. His youth was shaped by the aftereffects of World War II-both the unparalleled prosperity of the United States and the real terror of nuclear destruction embodied in the Cold War. As a college student he was inspired and swayed by the Civil Rights movement and Vietnam War. He graduated from Michigan State University in 1964 with an honors degree in political science, and received a law degree from George Washington University in Wash- ington, DC in 1967. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army in 1964 and served on active duty from 1967 until 1969.
Mr. Tripp practiced law in the early 70s and then turned to business as vocation and politics as avocation. His interest and involvement in things political, both the mechanics and the theory, grew in the Watergate era, and during the 1978-80 presidential season he was offered his first national level assignment in the primary campaign of George Bush. Over the years he has served in various capacities in political campaigns and also as an official in the Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton administrations.
Tom Tripp has written on politics and the law and has been published in various mainstream news outlets and online and professional journals. In addition to political consulting and involvement in campaigns he has been an active fund raiser and served on various non-profit, business, and education boards. For more than a decade he served as a board member and officer of the American Conservative Union Foundation and is currently chair of FirstPrinciples.US