Southeast Michigan, please be kind to Tom Lee. Thanks to some lame, opaque rues at an airline which shall remain nameless, the newest addition to the Xconomy team—who starts today as our Detroit editor and national med tech editor—endured a 10 hour drive this weekend instead of the two-hour flight he was expecting.
But weary though he may be from the trip—which took him from his previous home in Minneapolis, where he was the Minnesota bureau chief for MedCity News, to his new home base in Ann Arbor—Tom is tireless when it comes to covering the ins and outs of innovation. Prior to his time at MedCity News, he did stints at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Seattle Times, and China Daily USA, covering telecom, software, alternative energy, biotech, medical devices, venture capital, startups, patents, investment tax credits, innovation policy, public companies, startup, tech transfer….. You get the idea—if there’s an issue or theme that’s important to Southeast Michigan’s innovation community, chances are Tom’s written about it at some point in his career. And did I mention all of his awards? I don’t want to embarrass him too much on his first day, but you can read about some of them here.
We’re thrilled to have Tom bringing his wealth of experience and his keen eye for a good story—and his even keener nose for a bogus one—to bear in expanding both our efforts in the Detroit area and our coverage of med tech across all of the cities in our network. There are just more important stories to tell in each area than we could handle without Tom. So please join me in welcoming him (in the comments or at tlee@xconomy.com), and cross your fingers that his furniture shows up soon—he needs a comfortable spot to park his butt as he gets to work.