Tom Hershey, Senior Vice President of Operations, joined Sony Pictures Imageworks in 1995. Tom leads console game development at Imageworks and forged a deal with the Institute of Creative Technologies (ICT), a joint venture between the Army branch of the U.S. Military and the University of Southern California (USC), to further game development at Imageworks. Together with Pandemic Studios, Imageworks collaborated with ICT to create simulation training programs via immersive technologies. In addition to advancing game production at Imageworks, Tom has departmental oversight of the company's technical operations: interactive compositing, production services technicians, training, editorial, I/O and color timing.

Since joining Imageworks in 1995 as Vice President, Operations, Hershey has been one of the architects of the facility's phenomenal growth and rise to prominence in the industry. Imageworks has grown from 75 employees in 1995 to its current roster of over 600 employees. Its artists have provided visual effects for such high profile films as “Big Fish," “Bad Boys II," “Haunted Mansion," “Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle," “Seabiscuit," “The Matrix Revolutions," “The Matrix Reloaded," “Anger Management," “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers." “I Spy," “Men in Black 2" “Stuart Little 2," Academy Award ® nominated “Spider-Man," “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," “Cast Away," “Charlie's Angels," “What Lies Beneath," Academy Award ® nominated “Hollow Man," “Snow Falling on Cedars," “Patch Adams," Academy Award ® nominated “Stuart Little," “Contact," and Academy Award ® nominated “Starship Troopers."

An independent filmmaker and computer graphics enthusiast, Tom brings an aesthetic vision coupled with a broad understanding of the industry's technological possibilities to his management of Imageworks' workflow and operations. He began his entertainment career in 1988, when Columbia Pictures recruited him for their executive training program from UCLA's MBA program. After rotating through Feature Development, Marketing, Production and Distribution/Acquisitions, Tom became Director of Production Administration for Columbia in 1990 and for the next four years helped plan and oversee many features, including “Bram Stoker's Dracula," “Geronimo: An American Legend" and “Wolf."

“Imageworks has gained the reputation of being the cutting edge facility in two areas," said Tom. “The first is the creation of photo-real characters and creatures. We are the best in the business as evidenced by the Academy Award® nominations for ‘Stuart Little' and ‘Hollow Man,' ‘Spider-Man' and ‘Spider-Man 2' Second, Imageworks is pushing the envelope in emerging technology. Of all the studios out there, we utilize the most in house personnel whose sole job is to increase the efficiency of our technology pipeline. Whether it's the ability of our supervisors to use hand held devices to give instantaneous notes to our artists or the potential for high speed rendering (60 frames a second) that the development of Play Station 2 may offer for creating film and television effects, we're witnessing our investment reap dividends on a daily basis. The real payoff, however, will be our ability to help the growing number of filmmakers who want to use both transparent and obvious effects in their films."

Tom holds a BS in Management with a concentration in Computing Systems from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a MBA from UCLA.