About ON

Troy May is the owner, publisher and editor of ON Magazine. He has spent the majority of his professional career in the newsrooms as a reporter covering health care, biotechnology, higher education, public health, business, culture and arts in a variety of communities from Ohio to California.

During his time as a journalist, Mr. May won a variety of awards for his reporting on the health care industry. His last job as a reporter before purchasing the magazine was at the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal.

Mr. May believes in volunteering his time to build a strong healthy community. He is currently on two boards, Rainbow Chamber Silicon Valley, and AIDS Coalition Silicon Valley. In the Bay Area, Mr. May served on the Northern California Chapter Board for the National Lesbian and Gay Journalist Association.

After earning a journalism degree from Northern Kentucky University, he moved to Columbus, Ohio searching for a job in journalism. At the time in 1990, times were tough for newspapers and he ended up finding a job with a bank. But he didn’t give up on his dream to be a reporter. While working in the office during the day, he was a freelance stringer for community newspaper in the evenings, covering a variety of events, and local government committee meetings.

Eventually, he found his first full-time journalism job in 1992 with the Daily Reporter in Columbus, Ohio. He covered real estate, health care and the environment. He then moved around to a few other newspapers before ending up at Business First, a network of business newspaper owned by American City Business Journals. During his four years at that paper, he won two statewide awards for his coverage of the local health care industry.

In 2000, he accepted a transfer with the company to its San Jose Business Journal. While at the journal, he covered healthcare, higher education and biotechnology. After four years at the journal, he wanted to try something new. That’s when he left the journal for a job in San Francisco with Fleishman/Hillard, one of the largest international public relations firms in the world.

While at Fleishman/Hillard he worked on a variety of communications projects for hospitals, biotech and energy companies. Then he was hired at Gilead Sciences eight months after he started at the agency. His role at the pharmaceutical company was in internal communications.

All along, he really wanted to get back into journalism. Instead of going for a reporter position at a local newspaper or website, he decided to put together an offer to purchase a local gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender lifestyle magazine that served the San Jose, California area. He purchased the magazine, and overnight, he was launched into the publishing arena.