The Willow Glen resident and licensed clinical social worker was honored by the Santa Clara Valley Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers as the 2005 Regional Social Worker of the Year.

Thomas, however, didn't originally want to be a social worker. Wanting to please his father, he was well on his way to earning his law degree and becoming a patent lawyer.

Then he began to question his chosen field. He realized, while studying law at the University of Washington in Seattle in the 1970s, that all his elective courses were in psychology. Thomas found himself gravitating toward that field and therapeutic group work. He decided to redirect his studies and began searching for a school that had an opening for a social work major. He found a spot at California State University, Fresno, where he graduated with a master's degree in social work in 1977.

Thomas began his social work career in San Francisco, helping heroin addicts. From there, his client base became progressively younger. He started his own agency, Northern California Family Center, to help troubled adolescents and their families, and then counseled children at Eastfield's Children Center in Campbell, which is now known as EMQ Children and Family Services. Today, Thomas works with premature babies as young as six weeks old, helping their parents navigate the challenges they face with infants who might grow up with developmental delays. With the aid of an interpreter, Thomas helps many ethnically diverse families, taking into account the family's culture when matching resources that can help provide optimum support for newborns and parents.

"This is where you have the best chance for a positive early intervention," Thomas says.

Thomas also has the heart-wrenching task of counseling families whose newborn never makes it home.

In addition to his work at the Center for Learning and Achievement, Thomas has written several books and developed behavior modification software. His most recent book, Beliefs Have Shapes, tackles prejudice. Thomas develops the concept of "infoshapes"--the use of concrete shapes to describe abstract feelings--to teach young readers how prejudice is formed and therefore can be changed. In You've Got Issues, Thomas draws upon his years of counseling to illustrate how to identify the emotions managing our life issues. Once these emotions are identified and clarified, he offers some true-life solutions to similar problems, providing goals and hope for the reader.

In 1991, Thomas pioneered a network-assisted behavior management system software program that enabled parents, in cooperation with teachers, to access their child's schoolwork.

"Glenn would visit the low-income schools and give the software away," says Cyndy, Thomas' wife. "It was a very exciting and pioneering time for us."

Today, this concept has grown into a network-assisted behavior management system that uses rewards for reaching behavior and academic goals.

Thomas has even found a way to incorporate the years he studied to be a patent attorney into his counseling profession. He applied for, and was awarded, a patent for his software program.