Sit a while. Mirror Lake, Mondovi, Wis. around sunrise.
Tom Erickson left the small town of Mondovi, Wisconsin to study electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an experience that opened the door to interesting jobs and world travel. From the moment when Erickson did a co-op program for college students at Chevron’s San Francisco office, he was on a path that had him working outside of Wisconsin for four decades.
Erickson was influenced by his father, a third generation small business owner in Mondovi who had traveled around the world with the U.S. Navy, and by his mother, who urged him to move beyond Mondovi. So Erickson passed on running the Mondovi hardware store that has been in the family for 117 years and his sister, who still runs it, took over.