Tom Balbo is the founder and artistic director of the Morgan Conservatory. He is a Cleveland-based artist whose work has been collected for well over 30 years. Graduating from Baldwin-Wallace College with a BA in 1977, he completed his MFA in Studio Arts at Syracuse University in 1980 where he was awarded a Syracuse University Fellowship Grant and a Ford Foundation Grant. 

In 2007, Tom teamed up with noted Cleveland-area artists and national hand papermaking artists to improve and conserve the art of paper & book arts educational programming in the US. Knowing that these were art forms worth preserving, the Morgan Art of Papermaking Conservatory and Educational Foundation officially opened its doors in October 2008.