About Us

MARK THOMAS

Mark Thomas and Family

I was born in Urania, LA but grew up in Zachary, LA. My folks still live there and my three siblings live nearby. I attended Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, LA for my freshman year and then transferred to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA to complete my Bachelor of Arts in 1978. I met and married the former Martha “Marti” Quinn at LSU and we moved to Lafayette, LA in 1981. I entered the University of Louisiana’s Master of Business Administration program in 1983 and graduated in 1985.

As soon as I secured my MBA I joined a financial planning firm in Lafayette and studied for my Certified Financial Planner®. With that professional designation in hand, I started my own financial planning firm in 1989 called Horizon Financial Planning and the name was changed. Shortly thereafter Dexter Lyons joined the firm and he soon became a partner.

HCM is founded on the investment philosophy of active management of assets. This was distinctly different from passive theories of investing such as buy-and-hold. (More on this at the About Us page).

Marti & I have been married over 25 years (to each other!) and are the parents of Mark Thomas, Jr. and Ellison Thomas. Mark, Jr. is an Aerospace Engineering student at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Ellison is a Senior at St. Thomas More High School and is in the process of selecting her college.

I do not have a long list of hobbies and the short list does not include the usual hunting and fishing that is common in the “sportsman's paradise.” Instead, my passions are my church, my family and my business and I spend all of my time in those. Some friends have commented that I have no life (!), but I think I have the best life of all and would not do anything differently if I had to do it over.