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Tom O'Boyle

Director of Communications

Tom left a 40-year career in the news business for “good news” in 2018.

 Born in New Jersey, son of a fire chief and raised Roman Catholic, Tom accepted the Lord at the age of 7. He then began a “Methobapterian” journey in which he was led to Norman Vincent Peale; Methodist and Baptist churches; C.S. Lewis; and finally to his spiritual home in the Reformed tradition of the Presbyterian confession. He and wife Louise have been members of Beverly Heights since 1994.

Along with Senior Pastor Nate Devlin, Tom is co-host of “The Scattered Seeds Podcast.”

A 1978 graduate of Allegheny College in Meadville and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, he joined the staff of The Wall Street Journal in 1981 and was the paper’s correspondent in Germany in the final days of the Berlin Wall. He joined the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1994 as assistant managing editor. In his 25 years there, he worked as a senior editor in the newsroom and on the business side in content, digital strategy, marketing and audience development.

While at the Post-Gazette, a photography project he supervised won a Pulitzer Prize in 1998.

The author of “At Any Cost: Jack Welch, General Electric, and the Pursuit of Profit,” Tom taught journalism and multimedia storytelling for two decades at Duquesne and Carnegie Mellon universities.

An elder and past member of Session, he teaches in the Adult Christian Education program, which he supervises as part of his duties. He sings in the adult choir along with Louise, a teacher in the church’s preschool. 

They are the parents of three adult children: Brendan; Erin Westgate; and Cara Webster; and the grandparents of Charlie, Mae and Georgina Webster and Sommer Westgate. Cara and husband Ben are members of Beverly Heights. Erin Westgate and husband Scott also live in Mt. Lebanon.