Tom Burnett

Thomas Edward Burnett Jr. was born on May 29, 1963, the son of Thomas Burnett Sr. and Beverly Burnett. Burnett and his sisters grew up in Bloomington, Minnesota. He attended Ridgeview Elementary School, then Olson Middle School. At Thomas Jefferson Senior High School, where he wore jersey No. 11 and then No. 10, he led the Jaguars to the state finals as their starting quarterback in 1980. He graduated in 1981.

Burnett studied Economics at Saint John's University in Minnesota, where he was a quarterback on the football team. After two years, an injury shortened his football career and he transferred to the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. He was named president of the Alpha Kappa Psi fraternity, then later graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance. He went on to earn a Master of Business Administration degree at Pepperdine University.

In 1996, Burnett joined Thoratec Corporation, a medical devices company, as vice president of sales and marketing. In November 1999, he was promoted to senior vice president and chief operating officer.

In 1985, Burnett and a female classmate became the biological parents to a daughter who was given up for adoption. Her name is Mariah Mills Jacobsen. In July 1989, Burnett met his future wife, Deena, in Atlanta, where she had just completed flight attendant training for Delta Air Lines. They married in April 1992 and had three daughters. The family lived in San Ramon, California, where Deena worked as a stay-at-home mother, beginning when she first became pregnant in 1995. Thomas Burnett had attended Mass daily in the year prior to the September 11 attacks, attempting to address a sense of foreboding which he had expressed to his wife. Burnett had busts of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill in his office. In January 2004, Jacobsen obtained a copy of her birth certificate, and learned that Burnett was her father. She met Burnett's family, becoming close to his sisters, his widow Deena, and her three half-sisters.