History

In 1975, Bobbie Knopf was chair of the Department of Special Education at Northside High School in Atlanta. At that time she began a needs assessment dialogue with Joyce Slaughter, the parent of one of her students. They realized that the options available in north Atlanta for students with special needs after they completed high school were limited.

As a result of the strategic needs assessment, they formed an Advisory Board. Having heard of Tommy Nobis' commitment to Special Olympics and persons with disabilities, the board approached the Atlanta Falcons All Pro Linebacker for support and named the project the Tommy Nobis Center.

Once incorporated, the Tommy Nobis Center hired an executive director, Connie Kirk, and contracted with the Georgia Department of Labor's Vocational Rehabilitation Program to provide vocational/work evaluations, social, personal, work adjustment services, job placement, and job coaching for area clients.

In the 1980s, the Tommy Nobis Center expanded its mission to include employment opportunities. To accommodate this expansion, the Center moved twice in the next decade, settling in 1992 in a 52,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art facility in Marietta, Ga. funded by public and private funds.

The 1990s brought a corporate restructuring of the Tommy Nobis Center, to include a not-for-profit parent company and three subsidiaries.                                                             
 




                                                         l-r): Co-founders Bobbie Knopf, Tommy Nobis & Joyce Slaughter
                                                                                   
With the Affirmative Industry model as part of the plan, the Tommy Nobis Center established a micrographic service bureau in 1996 and, in 1998, purchased a bulk mail processing operation that provided jobs for production and machine operator. Both ventures provided training with opportunities in technology and automation.
 
  In 2006, the Center sold the mailing service to 
  concentrate on today's model of community    
  based training sites.  The Center still provides 
  training and employment services onsite, and
  at 18 community based locations around Metro 
  Atlanta & the South.

  With the recent economic downturn, the Center 
  sought ways to diversify funding while creating
  jobs.   Recycletronics...at Tommy Nobis Center,
  an electronics recycling business, was 
  created in June 2009.  This social   enterprise 
  helps protect the planet, while creating jobs for 
  people with disabilities and other barriers, and provides a tax  deduction. 

Corporations and consumers may donate  TVs, computers, cell phones, copiers, stereos and more at the Center in  Marietta.  Since June 2009, the program has created 71 jobs and processed more than 4 million pounds of electronics that won't go into landfills.