Thomas C. Jackson
Past Grand Master
A Freemason since 1996, MWB Tom Jackson is an active member of his local lodges, Lake Harriet #277, and Sir Winston Churchill #351. He served as Master of Lake Harriet in 2001. Since that time he has served as a Trustee of Lake Harriet's Lodge Company, responsible for finance, tenant relations, and equity projects. Jackson led the effort to install an automatic adjustment - COLA - into the dues structure, allowing the lodge to meet the annual burden of inflation head on.

With the completion of his year as Grand Master on March 28, 2009, MWB Tom Jackson will serve for two years as a member of the Corporate Board of the Grand Lodge of Minnesota, AF&AM. He continues to assist an excellent network of volunteer officers as a leader in Minnesota's lodge revitalization effort, enthusiastically supporting the current Grand Lodge officers in their work.

MWB Tom Jackson is a 32° KCCH Scottish Rite Mason, a member of the Minneapolis Valley of the Southern Jurisdiction, having participated as a degree actor in both the 10th and 14th degrees and has served as a line officer of that Valley's Lodge of Perfection. He is a Royal Arch Mason of St. John's Chapter #9 of Minneapolis, a Shriner, wearing the fez as a Noble of Zuhrah Temple of Minneapolis, and is a member of Lake Harriet Chapter #202 of the OES. He is a Member of Selim Grotto of the Grottoes of North America.
 
In 2009, MWB Jackson was appointed as a Director of the George Washington Masonic Memorial , supporting the preservation and awareness of this national treasure, located in Alexandria, VA.

Cooperation and mutual support between lodges was a key concern for his year as Grand Master, explains Jackson, whose stated challenge to the lodges that received Gold Level recognition in Minnesota's Lodge Recognition Program at the April 2008 Annual Communication was to expand on that success by helping other lodges, building their base of volunteers, deploying them to support neighboring lodges and where possible, to establish another new lodge. Indeed, a highlight of his closing session was to charter two new lodges in the state, Sir Winston Churchill Lodge #351 and Gen. Douglas MacArthur Lodge #352.  Additionally, he worked to identify and appoint several dozen new Grand Representatives, Minnesota's ambassadors to other jurisdictions, and to create a new medal distributed to each of these reps and their foreign-based counterparts. On the short list of topics for speeches during his year were the four letters inscribed on Jackson's pin:  Q, standing for Quality and Pride in Our Work, R, standing for Relevancy to the Community, E, standing for Engagement of Members, and S, standing for Solvency and Self-Supporting Financial Management. These four discussion points form the basis of tactical advice to lodge leaders that help direct lodges in how to improve their overall programming. He is most proud of a new University Masonic Club formed in 2008 to support University Greek-letter fraternity members with mentoring and scholarships, and to raise awareness at the undergraduate level of the strong synergy between collegiate fraternities and Freemasonry.
 
A highlight of his year as Grand Master was to lead a contingent of Masons to Cuba, meeting with the Grand Lodge of Cuba, Cuban Scottish Rite leadership, and members of some 25 lodges.  Partnering with friends from the Grand Lodge of DC, Minnesota's was the first state jurisdiction to make this trip and meet with representatives of 30,000 man strong Cuban Masonry in fifty years.  His group of travelers hand carried a half-ton of humanitarian aid to the island, where it was donated directly to the lodges for distribution to their most needy citizens.

Professionally, MWB Tom Jackson is a founding partner of Bella Audio, Inc., a manufacturer of precision audio equipment for yachts, high-end home installations and commercial space, and is an independent manufacturers' rep as Principal of Pro-Active Marketing. Prior to that he worked at Best Buy Co., Inc. with an eighteen year tenure as a senior project and business development manager. His consultative firm, IdeaBuilder, serves fraternal organizations nationwide in the development of Solvency and Viability Review (SVR) Tools, fitted for each jurisdiction. See www.lodgebuilder.org.

MWB Tom Jackson is married, and he and his wife Amey have three children. The family resides in Minneapolis, MN. They garden, they cook, she maintains a shop on eBay, and he follows politics, writes, watches sci-fi and works on computers -- in his spare time.