Tom Joe, fierce promoter of better policies for the poor, the elderly and the disabled, founded the Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP) in 1979 and was its Director until his death. Blind from early childhood, Tom became a thoughtful and influential policy analyst. He served as staff to the California General Assembly and later as a senior official in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Tom shaped landmark national public policies such as the Supplemental Security Income Program and the Earned Income Tax Credit, and created private sector initiatives such as the KIDS COUNT project, and published numerous articles and papers on the future of American social welfare policy. In 1986, Tom received the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship awarded to people of outstanding talent, extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits, and a marked capacity for self-direction.