Tom Joseph was a fresh-faced 17 year-old when he found himself stared down by a team of retired Navy officers during an interview for an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy. One of the hardened, old sailors asked him, “What is your goal in life?”
Joseph hadn’t thought of himself in this way, so he pondered it for a couple minutes, then blurted out: “My goal is to do something that makes such a significant impact on the history of the world that my great-great grandchildren will read about it in their history books.”
The officers sat stunned before they dismissed the young pup and later supported his appointment. They were probably just as stunned when they learned that Joseph declined the offer to pursue a degree in Mechanical Engineering at Florida State University. Joseph, however, has done his damnedest to make that brash goal come true. At 32, the Lawrence County resident has already co-invented a noise-reduction system that makes rocket and jet engines 75 percent quieter, helped rebuild his family’s candy business and even provided musical entertainment at Pittsburgh Steelers games.
Joseph can truly cement his place in the history books if his latest and greatest venture, Epiphany Solar Water Systems, continues to make strides in its effort to provide clean, desalinated water using only the sun as a power source. The seven-person, New Castle-based company–which has a new CEO in startup veteran Ron Pettengill and has made major strides in attracting major customers in the Middle East and India–will soon be selling its solar water purification systems to both residential and commercial customers. Innovation Works invested $200,000 in the company last year, and Epiphany is now seeking angel investors as it makes its next big move.
NO BUSINESS LIKE FAMILY BUSINESS: Joseph’s Lebanese great-grandfather came to the U.S. nearly 100 years ago and sold fruit out of a cart to New Castle steelworkers for more than a decade. By the 1930s, he had a garage-sized market and was providing free food to the poor during the Great Depression. He built that into what was then the largest supermarket in America in the late 1960s. As his grandfather aged in the mid-1970s, family strife tore the company to pieces. The company never recovered and a few years ago, Joseph’s Supermarket went out of business.
“I never met my great-grandfather, but I’m told I somehow have his personality,” says Joseph. “By the time I was old enough to understand what happened in his lifetime and how this proud, hard-working man’s legacy was destroyed in a single, short-sighted generation, I also vowed not to allow history repeat itself.”
Joseph’s father started his own contract manufacturing candy company in 1993, but by 2005 business was lagging and the family was worried about his health. Joseph moved home to help turn the company around. A year later, a chance phone book search led to the Joseph family partnering to create treats for horses, dubbing the flagship product Uncle Jimmy’s Hangin’ Balls. The product is now sold in 20 countries and is among an entire line of equine goodies. It was around this time that the idea for Epiphany began to take shape. Go figure.
SPREADING THE SEEDS: Joseph isn’t merely satisfied with developing game-changing technology. He also wants to create a grassroots movement to educate people about the world’s water crisis. The company has formed a non-profit called Project Eviive that will market itself to socially and environmentally conscious groups on university campuses across the country and raise money to sponsor the placement of one solar distillation unit on campus. The campus system would purify rain water or tap water, store the water in a tank and dispense it on demand to students with refillable bottles for a small fee. The proceeds will go back to Project Eviive to promote the program to other schools around the world and to purchase and install additional units in third-world nations.
“The systems will have built in telemetry so the students will be able to log in to our website and see how much money their campus raised and how many lives they have impacted around the world in real-time,” says Joseph.
HEY MISTER DEEJAY: If Joseph has his way, he’ll be working less on the business side and more on R&D–getting his hands dirty is more fun and is more in line with his unofficial, yet strict “work hard, party hard” policy. He’s a certified dive master who travels frequently to the Caribbean to scuba dive.
In college, Joseph worked weekends as a nightclub deejay in Tallahassee, Fla. That paved the way for a phone call from Steelers owner Art Rooney, who asked Joseph to serve as the “Megatron DJ” at Heinz Field a couple years ago. It was a blast and ESPN.com listed him as the best among his peers nationwide, but bigger dreams were waiting to be fulfilled.
“We never cross any lines, but if you’re going to work with me, you have to know how to have fun,” he says. “Otherwise, you’ll never survive the insanity and frustration that comes with R&D.
“Work is my sandbox.”
WHAT SOLAR SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE: When Joseph presents Epiphany, he often gets the it’s-too-good-to-be-true look. But Joseph insists it really is as simple as it seems, a discovery he made while trying to make an affordable concentrated solar power generator.
“It’s sort of like building a motorcycle. Whoever built the first motorcycle didn’t need to build the engine, it already existed,” says Joseph. “And he didn’t need to build a bicycle. All he had to do was bolt them together and he had something new. We didn’t invent the idea of concentrated solar power. And the idea of distilling water to purify it has been around forever.”
Government entities and NGOs, though, are becoming fast believers. The versatility and potential of the systems–they can produce significant energy on their own and will also soon be available in hybrid versions that can utilize other power sources–have Joseph hoping for at least $5 million in sales in the next year. True success, however, would put an extra zero at the end of that figure.
“If we pull it all off, we’re going to make the world a better place, make a ton of money and have a great time doing it,” says Joseph. “I get excited just thinking about it.”
Joe Petrucci is managing editor of Keystone Edge. Send feedback here.
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