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 W. Slaughter, the parent of one of her students. They realized that the options available for students with special needs after they completed high school were limited.

As a result of a strategic needs assessment, an Advisory Board was formed. 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, Vocational Rehabilitation 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 in addition to training programs. To accommodate this expansion, the Center would move twice in the next decade, settling in 1992 in a 52,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art facility funded by public and private monies.

The 1990s brought a corporate restructuring of the Tommy Nobis Center. This structure includes a not-for-profit parent company and four subsidiaries. In 1996 the Center's leadership developed a Financial Empowerment Plan addressing the changing job market and stabilizing operating revenues.

 
With the Affirmative Industry model as part of the plan, the Tommy Nobis Center established a micrographic service bureau in 1996 and purchased a bulk mail processing operation offering production and machine operator jobs in 1998. 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 11 community based locations around metro Atlanta.  Tommy Nobis Center expanded services to Rome and Dalton in December 2006.