In the first of our new human interest profile series, we spotlight Tom McMahon, president of Milner, Inc.

If Tom McMahon, who has been Milner’s president since 2021, said he has a chip on his shoulder, it would be easy to understand why. At the tender age of 14, in 1978, McMahon’s world came crashing down around him. His father, with whom he had spoken on the phone a few hours earlier, died suddenly from a heart attack.

To describe the event as tragic understates its impact on the McMahon family. Their father/husband’s death was only the beginning of shock waves for the four remaining McMahons. Tom, who is the eldest of the family’s three children, was born in the Bronx, New York City. When he was six, the family moved 25 miles north to Irvington, New York, near White Plains in Westchester County.

In the 1970s, it was common for a married woman to be a stay-at-home mom, and Mrs. Marion McMahon took on her motherly duties with tremendous pride. Mr. McMahon (John) was a salesman for a janitorial supplies company. Tom recalled, “What we found out [after he died] was that dad wasn’t saving money and had no life insurance.”

FAMILY PHOTO: Marion (from left), Tracy, Tom, and Dan McMahon.

Eviction loomed and, after going 90 days past due on the home mortgage, one day Marion and the kids found the county sheriff at the front door and their furniture on the lawn. Seeing that sight is about as traumatic as real-life experiences get for a child.

Having to move into an apartment made young Tommy “Mac,” that’s what his friends called him, feel like a second-class citizen compared to them. His Mom was working hard and doing her best, toiling at three jobs to make ends meet. “She was a telemarketer,” her son related, “selling ink and toner over the phone” for Gestetner Duplicating, a company based in Yonkers, New York. Her second job was in telemarketing, too, “working for credit card companies,” Tom remembered. And, on weekends, Marion typed transcriptions to make some extra cash. To this day, McMahon says he still has tremendous patience with telemarketers and treats them with respect.

“Our mother pulled us out of tough times,” McMahon continued. One particularly humbling experience occurred with her at a grocery store in town. When it came time to pay, she tried to distract teenage Tom’s attention, but it was too late: Mac had seen the food stamps coming out of his mother’s purse and felt ashamed, knowing that his friends’ parents weren’t receiving government assistance for necessities.

BONUS VIDEO CONTENT:
Tom McMahon discussing The Cannata Report’s 2025 Women Influencers Brunch
and reflecting on how hard his mother worked—from a proud son’s perspective.

As a boy, McMahon had immersed himself in sports. Organized football was his favorite, and in high school he excelled on the gridiron as a defensive back. Most summer days were spent with his brother rowing a boat on Barnegat Bay (New Jersey), treading for clams, which they sold for cash. To this day, fishing is still a passion. “I spend a lot of my free time in the Florida Keys,” McMahon shared.

He was lucky to have some great teachers and mentors in high school. One man, familiar with the family’s circumstances, looked out for him. That would be Dick Hajek, principal of the New York public school that Tom attended. “I was not the best student,” McMahon admits, “and my senior year I was cutting class a lot and not going to school.” Concerned, Hajek showed up at the house one day. He and Tom had a “come-to-Jesus” confrontation, which is when McMahon started to seriously consider a future in the U.S. Navy. “I had good friends who were going places,” he recalled, “and I was smart enough to listen.”

Uncle Sam and the sea

The Navy provided needed structure, McMahon noted. He applied himself and became an aviation electronics technician, learning skills that later would transfer to the copier business. “My six-year Navy experience truly was transformational,” he reported. He still heeds sound advice about life and dealing with people garnered from a chief petty officer more than 40 years ago:

1. Know what you’re doing.
2. Can other people trust you?
3. Show them that you care.

The Navy put him through college, first at Old Dominion University, then at the University of Rhode Island, where McMahon graduated with a degree in finance. The next goal was to attend law school.

Young “Tommy Mac” in the Navy, circa 1982.

“I could argue, loved to read, and desperately wanted to go to Pace University” in nearby White Plains, he said, “but I had no money.” While working as a waiter and bartender at a TGI Fridays restaurant in Tarrytown, New York, McMahon ran into a Navy buddy who had taken a job with Harris and Lanier, which had started a new business. “My Mom worked in the copier industry, and my sister was working for Xerox at the time,” he remembered, “. . . I really didn’t want to get into that field.” He did, however, need a better-paying job.

So, McMahon leaped and never looked back. In 1987, he began his career as a sales manager for Harris/3M, a Lanier joint venture. Based in Manhattan, he developed a reputation as a turnaround specialist. Mike Gould is someone who informed his thinking back in those days. “Mike trained me, and he was one of those guys who you wanted in the field with you,” McMahon praised.

In the early 1990, Lanier wanted to open dealerships in New York City, and McMahon became the U.S. equipment distributor’s dealer manager: a post he held for five years. This is where he really learned the business, he says, through the rebranding of Toshiba machines and by converting Canon dealers. But the Lanier organization was getting too big and bureaucratic for his taste.

Another influential figure was Jay Shields, his corporate boss (now 93), who gave great advice and planted the dealer-channel seed in his mind. McMahon left Lanier for three years to become district manager at Officeware, Inc. Then, before Ricoh’s $260-million acquisition of Lanier in 2001, he joined Milner. That was 28 years ago.

McMahon’s Path at Milner

• 1998 – 2001: District Manager
• 2001 – 21: Regional Vice President, Tampa Bay area
• 2021 (May): President & GM of Milner’s Florida operations
• 2021 (September): President of Milner Inc.

Gene “Dusty” Milner, who became a mentor to McMahon, wanted Tom to run the dealer’s operation in Florida. McMahon wanted no part of moving to Florida at the time. “I thought it was too hot and sticky down here,” he laughed, but Milner could be persuasive. “I was fostered by Dusty,” McMahon said fondly. “He gave me the keys.”

McMahon speaking at the local at the YMCA about water safety and the dangers of breath-holding and shallow-water blackout—a cause near and dear to the Milner family’s collective heart.

From his experiences in the Navy and in the workplace, McMahon knows what good and bad leadership looks like. Effective leaders have no problem sharing information, he believes. Shields was like that: “low key yet confident,” is the way he remembered it. On the other side are insecure leaders who withhold information and “can’t tell you the truth. These are the people who feel safe when they think they’re smarter than you,” McMahon explained.

A few of the many lessons he learned from Dusty Milner are to “hire the best people, pay them well, and stay out of their way.” A people-first approach has built loyalty and paid dividends for Milner Inc., where the average employee tenure is 11 years. More than 50 Milner employees are combinations of parents whose children now also work for the dealership, which speaks for itself, McMahon believes. “What mother or father would encourage their son or daughter to work for a place they don’t like?” he asks. (He and his own eldest son are among that group.)

McMahon tries to lead by example, and his management style is straightforward. He won’t ask anything of a subordinate that he hasn’t done or wouldn’t do himself. “I won’t be outworked,” he asserted, and typically is the first person in the office in the morning and one of the last people to leave. He attributes that nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic, along with his enterprising spirit, to his parents, especially his mother. “We always had to hustle as kids,” he reflected, reminiscing about mowing lawns in the neighborhood and his newspaper delivery routes. Despite their rather harsh childhoods, both his siblings have also done very well in life, he points out.

When he joined Milner in the late 1990s, the dealer had only 35 leased machines in the Fort Lauderdale area. “Today, including its four Florida locations, the company’s overall annual revenues are nearly $100 million,” McMahon said with pride.

In addition to fishing in the Keys, McMahon enjoys “hanging out” with his three adult children: Mitchell, 30; Caroline, 27; and Jack, 24. He’s looking forward to a “Band of Brothers” tour to Europe in June with Mitchell, a disabled veteran who served in Afghanistan. “My dad served in the Army,” McMahon noted, “and I had an uncle who was in the Navy and at Normandy during World War II.”

The McMahon clan in Italy.

Mitchell (from left), Jack, Tom, and Caroline. Mitchell works for Milner in its Tampa operations; Jack for Delta Airlines;
and Caroline, “the best salesperson of all time,” according to her proud father, works as a recruiter placing physicians.

Formal fun: Tom’s sons Mitchell (from left), the eldest, Jack, and daughter Caroline.

Perhaps most telling: “I look forward to Mondays!” McMahon added enthusiastically.

What’s in a Name?

Some industry history: Dusty’s father, Gene Milner, Sr., was married to Joyce Lanier and joined his father-in-law as a partner in 1953. By ‘65, he had become the president of Lanier Company. Its business products division spun off in 1977 as a public company, which was acquired six years later by Harris Corp. and renamed Harris/Lanier. During this time, the senior Milner was at the helm as the CEO. His son, Gene (aka “Dusty”), later led Lanier from 2006-10 (by then known as Lanier Worldwide, a company that once had $1.3 billion in annual revenue and more than 9,400 employees), before Milner Inc. began operating in Atlanta in 1987. (Cason Milner, whose middle name is Lanier, presently presides over the dealership at its Atlanta HQ.)

Milner now has more than 300 employees in nine locations: three in Georgia (Atlanta, Athens, and Gainesville); four in Florida (Deerfield Beach, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa); one in Raleigh, North Carolina; and one in New York City.

A McMahon Family Reunion in Irvington, New York: Tom’s sister and brother and their families.