Thad Reed grew up on a livestock and grain farm south of Martinsville, and between birth and age eighteen, he took approximately two summer vacations.

Then he went to Japan. Eight times.

He also went to Europe, Mexico, Canada, and manufacturing facilities spread across multiple continents. The farm kid who barely left Clark County as a child became someone whose passport filled up in the service of a global automotive company headquartered two towns away from where he grew up.

And when it was all put in perspective, he chose to stay two miles from where it started.

Reed graduated from Martinsville in 2000, enrolled at SIU Carbondale to study mechanical engineering, met his wife there, and graduated in 2004 with a degree and a direction. The engineering instinct had been forming long before any classroom reinforced it. His father was the kind of farmer who could take an engine apart, identify what was wrong, fix it, and reassemble it someone for whom a broken piece of equipment was just a problem waiting to be solved.

"I grew up around someone who could solve problems," Reed said.

He brought that sensibility to Carbondale, excelled, and came out the other side with an offer from North American Lighting. He married that same year, entered a management training program that rotated him through multiple manufacturing facilities, and appeared to be on a clean trajectory outward.

Then his father passed away. He and his wife chose to move back. What felt in the moment like a detour became the decision that shaped everything that followed; a return to the Paris, Illinois headquarters that has anchored more than sixteen years of his career, and a life built deliberately close to the place that formed him.

The career has not been small. He has managed projects and people, navigated a corporate environment inside a Japanese-owned global company, and carried the work ethic of a southern Illinois farm into rooms that weren't expecting it.

At North American Lighting, when they talk about recruiting, a phrase comes up consistently. "We hire for work ethic, hire for drive, and we train for skill," he said. Programming robots can be taught. Running projects in complex engineering environments can be learned. But the underlying drive, the willingness to show up, to figure things out and to take ownership has to already be there.

He believes Martinsville produces that. Rural communities produce it. The farm teaches it. "You've got to work with what you have," he said.

Those who knew him in high school would have recognized that trait, even if the global career it produced might have surprised them. He played football and basketball; was quarterback for three years, point guard for two or three, not because he was the most naturally gifted player in either sport, but because something else drew his teammates toward him.

"My brain is probably my best asset," he said, with no apology in it.

He also has a harder time sitting still than most people. "I'm not skilled at sitting back and doing nothing and listening," he said. "I'm probably more of a talker than a listener." Over the years, that instinct has led him to run projects that, by his own admission, maybe someone else should have been running. He's gotten better at stepping back. But when something goes unled, he still feels the pull.

"It kills me to be quiet and just keep running it — because somebody's got to."

One teacher shaped his sense of accountability early. Mr. McCoy taught human anatomy and a few other subjects at Martinsville and had, notably, taught Thad's father at the very beginning of his career and Thad himself near the very end of it. Two generations of Reeds, bookending a career. The lesson he absorbed wasn't just content. It was the expectation that you show up, you meet the standard, and you don't look for someone else to carry your load.

He gives the same message to his three daughters, all Martinsville graduates. His oldest is at SIUE now, pursuing nursing. Two are still in high school. What he tells them isn't complicated. He calls it "try hard."

"You can't measure success by your job. You can't measure it by your salary," he said. "As long as you try hard, that'll get you a long way."

Possibilities are kind of endless, he said. Whatever path. Whatever place. The key is the same one his father modeled on that farm, the same one Mr. McCoy demanded in that classroom, the same one North American Lighting has been hiring for since long before Thad Reed walked through the door.

Work. Show up. Figure it out.

He did it across three continents. He came home to do it two miles from where he learned how.