The Thomas Harris Family Foundation

“We have been blessed in life and it’s a good feeling to share those blessings with others.”

Thomas “Tom” Harris grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. Inspired by high-school science and physics teachers, he attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he majored in physics. There, he developed a fascination with optics and astronomy. In high school, Tom met his future wife, Marcie, at church; they married eight years later in 1953 after completing college and eventually had two sons.

Following graduation, Harris studied with Rudolph Kingslake and Bob Hopkins at the University of Rochester. Completing his Master’s degree there in 1953, he joined Bell & Howell and spent the next 10 years working on projects such as computerizing third order and ray trace calculations. In 1963, after being transferred to southern California, Harris founded ORA, now the Optical Solutions Group at Synopsys.

When Harris established ORA, the company focused on lens design and on developing the program that would eventually become CODE V. The program’s powerful capability to do optimization, analysis, and tolerancing of image-forming optical systems and free-space photonics is now used by scientists and researchers around the world. Tom was recognized with several distinguished awards, published numerous technical papers, and eventually held five US patents in the field of optics.

A Donor Advised Endowment Fund with PCF

When he retired, the firm had grown from 1 to 93 employees.  Through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, the owners sold the company to the employees over time to allow them to share in the profits of what they had helped to build.  Tom and his wife Marcie also started a private foundation as a way to give back to the community in which they had raised their family and built their business. In 2008, they terminated their private foundation and transferred the assets to the Pasadena Community Foundation to create a donor advised endowment fund, the Thomas Harris Family Foundation.

Following the passing of Tom and Marcie, their two sons, Tom Jr. and Richard, have continued to support Pasadena-area nonprofits through grants from the Thomas Harris Family Fund at PCF. As of 2025, the fund has made more than $2 million in grants to organizations that include the Mt. Wilson Institute, the HEAR Center, Coffee with a Cause, and the Altadena Mountain Rescue Team.