Tom Hill, Jr. was born, at home, in Maricopa county Arizona, now largely consumed by the Phoenix metropolitan area. The house he was raised in is now in the inner city of Phoenix. He was schooled in the Phoenix public schools and attended Phoenix College, earning an A.A. degree. By this time, Arizona State College at Tempe had become ASU. Here he studied Design and graduated in 1962. A short time in the world of aerospace engineering design created an enormous need in Tom Hill, Jr., a burning desire to learn more about how things in the world work. He returned to ASU to pursue electrical and then industrial engineering, earning a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering at Arizona State, more than 30 years ago. He concentrated on systems engineering and operations research.

Tom Hill, Jr. has been fascinated with flows in systems for over 30 years. Twenty-one plus years were spent in industry applying the concepts both in manufacturing and engineering. These years were sandwiched between Industrial Engineering teaching assignments at Purdue and now at St Ambrose. He has published more than twenty papers on a variety of subjects, including the analysis of flows in systems.