Ann Arbor Public Schools is tracing the careers of its graduates in a new storytelling series, and the first profile belongs to a Pioneer High School alum who went from editing the student newspaper to running one of the country's busiest political polling operations.

Tom Jensen, Pioneer class of 2002, is director of Public Policy Polling in Raleigh, N.C. The district published his profile Monday, Aug. 10, as the inaugural installment of "Where Are They Now?" on the AAPS District News site.

Jensen grew up in the district's pipeline: Burns Park Elementary (class of 1995), Tappan Middle School (1998), then Pioneer. After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he organized for the Sierra Club before joining PPP in 2007. He led the firm by age 24.

The company, founded in 2001 by Dean Debnam, gained national attention in 2008 when it correctly predicted Barack Obama would win the South Carolina Democratic primary by a wide margin while most other polls showed a tight race. In 2024, PPP had the second-most federal clients of any Democratic polling company, according to Jensen.

Jensen credits Pioneer journalism teacher Don Packard and the student newspaper, the Optimist, with preparing him to lead.

"I was in Don Packard's class for 3.5 out of my 4 years at Pioneer, mostly working on the student newspaper, the Optimist. ... When I became the head of PPP at 24, the owner of the company similarly trusted me to figure out for myself how to make it thrive, and that wasn't intimidating for me because I'd already been in a similar situation in high school. In some ways, those years with him and the paper were my MBA!" Jensen said in the AAPS profile.

He also said he never took a math class after leaving AAPS, crediting his K-12 math teachers with equipping him for a statistics-heavy career in which he writes 1,000 to 2,000 words a day interpreting poll results for clients.

Jensen still visits Ann Arbor regularly. He ran the Burns Park Run 10K in 2025 alongside his first-grade teacher, Mrs. Reid, attends Detroit Tigers games with his former math teachers and walks regularly with his middle school Latin teacher, Mrs. Pedley. He visits his former school librarian, Mrs. Harvey, in Petoskey each summer.

His involvement with the district extends beyond nostalgia. Jensen was active in the 2004 AAPS bond campaign that led to the $205.4 million capital improvement package and the construction of Skyline High School, which opened in 2008.

AAPS has not announced a schedule for future "Where Are They Now?" installments.