Tom Hayes is Assistant Professor in the Film Division at Ohio University, where he teaches post production and documentary development.

Originally from Vermont, Tom Hayes has been making films since he was a kid, winning the Kentucky Educational Television Young Peoples Film Competition when he was 15. As a young man he worked as a deck hand, shipping out of New York on cargo ships. While seafaring started as a strategy to pay for film school, trips into third and fourth world ports became a profound formative experience. Tom received a B.G.S. degree with Emphasis in Cinema and Philosophy from Ohio University in 1977.