The Quiet Man |
NEW KENSINGTON, Pennsylvania – Thomas Tull is walking along the old, wooden, brick floor of what began as the Pittsburgh Reduction Company and later became Alcoa, a place where researchers and manufacturers created a hub of foundational aluminum manufacturing for nearly a century.
In truth, this was the center of innovation and manufacturing in America. And after lying dormant for decades, Tull took his vision for remaking and rethinking U.S. manufacturing from an idea and ethos into reality two years ago.
For exactly 80 years, the people who stood along these wooden floors fueled America's leadership and industrial growth, producing things now common in our lives, such as cooking utensils and specialized materials – things that we take for granted today but are conveniences that changed people's daily lives for the better.
Tull is giving a tour of Re:Build, an advanced manufacturing company whose goal is to revitalize America's manufacturing base – not just for now but for future generations.
Tull said he bought into Re:Build when Jeff Wilke, former president of Amazon, called and told him that he was very concerned about America losing its ability to make complex things stateside. Wilke explained that instead of continuing at Amazon, he wanted to build manufacturing hubs in the country. And he wanted Tull to invest in that moment and be on board.
"So we did that," Tull said. To say that the Binghamton, New York, native is understated is spot-on – not just in manner but in appearance. Tull, dressed in jeans and a black jacket, blends right in with the western Pennsylvania scenery.
Few would know from his comportment that he is a longtime minority owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New York Yankees, or that he is co-chairman of TWG Global, which invests in artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies. He also sits on the boards of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Smithsonian Institution, the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
Tull is everywhere, yet visibly, he is nowhere. He is the quiet man with a deep-rooted patriotism measured in substance, not flash.
The Re:Build plant is massive, 1 million square feet, part of Tull's vision to restore U.S. factory work that the country has lost overseas. He also wants to revive and rebuild something equally important: the U.S. workforce, and with the same spirit of the U.S. workforce that built the country 100 years ago. For him, those two things are patriotism at its deepest core.
Tull said the reason the region is so important to building the future is threefold, and it begins with the universities located within the city limits.
"There's a lot of local know-how, between engineering, research, and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, but also the legacy of manufacturing expertise that is the heritage of this place," he said.
Tull smiles and points to the high-tech advanced manufacturing, robotics, and 3D........