Blake Mycoskie is the Founder of TOMS and the brains behind the brand’s One for One® model
Mycoskie was born in Arlington, Texas, to Mike Mycoskie, an orthopedic surgeon, and Pam Mycoskie, an author.
After first attending Arlington Martin High School, he graduated from St. Stephen's Episcopal School in Austin in 1995.
Mycoskie began playing tennis when he was 10.
He attended Southern Methodist University on a partial tennis scholarship in 1995 and elected a dual major in philosophy and business. After an Achilles tendon injury he sustained as a sophomore, which effectively ended his tennis career, Mycoskie left SMU and launched his first business, EZ Laundry.
Following college, Mycoskie moved to Nashville and founded Mycoskie Media, an outdoor billboard company that focused mainly on marketing country music. The company was quickly profitable and was bought by Clear Channel nine months after its launch.
Mycoskie visited Argentina on vacation in 2006. While there, he met an American woman who was part of a volunteer organization that provided shoes for children in need. Mycoskie spent several days travelling from village to village with the group and on his own. "(I witnessed) the intense pockets of poverty just outside the bustling capital," he wrote in a 2011 article for The Business Insider. "It dramatically heightened my awareness. Yes, I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that poor children around the world often went barefoot, but now, for the first time, I saw the real effects of being shoeless: the blisters, the sores, the infections."
Inspired, Mycoskie returned to the United States and founded Shoes for Better Tomorrows. The model, which serves TOMS’ mission of using business to improve lives, was created to promote corporate responsibility and conscious consumerism. And so, for every pair of shoes sold, TOMS would provide a new pair to a person in need. Later, Blake would extend TOMS One for One model to address other vital needs, such as eye care and safe water, achieved through TOMS eyewear and coffee sales.
Blake’s simple idea has grown into a global movement, impacting over 100 million lives to date.