Tomas is both an entrepreneur and an academic by vocation and profession. Concerning the later he is an Assistant Professor at the University of St. Gallen with research specializing in international business, Asia/China and Top Teams. He has extensive teaching experience including executive education at some of the world' s leading business schools, including Fudan University, INSEAD, Tongji University' s School of Economics and Management, the Rotman School of Management (University of Toronto), the McDonough School of Business (Georgetown) or the SKOLKOVO Moscow School of Management. Tomas also enjoys crafting teaching materials such as case studies that bring to life entrepreneurial and business situations in a variety of international settings such as China and Russia.

In parallel to his scholarship, this ‘academic entrepreneur’ has partnered with Chinese founders and launched a multitude of start-ups in the software and information technology sectors having tasted both successful exits, as well as failed ventures. His courses never fail to draw from his hands-on, in-the-trenches business experience. His research is inspired by actual management phenomena, the approaches to innovation and the decision-making patterns he has directly encountered in the business world.

At the personal level, Tomas has a unique global perspective and is equally familiar in the West as he is in the East. He is well versed in emerging and advanced economies, specializing in Japan, German-speaking Europe as well as on China and India. Having started his international career at the Wharton Export Network supporting the foreign market entry strategies of American firms, Tomas’ direct interest in Asia began in the early 1990’s when he obtained the privilege to work “as a Japanese employee” at the Tokyo headquarters of a global electronics kaisha. He published his first book on the country’s challenges and potential; Japan's Open Future: An Agenda for Global Citizenship (co-authored with J.P. Lehmann and J. Haffner).

Tomas graduated with honors from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, obtaining in parallel a Japanese language degree from Sophia University in Tokyo. He later earned a Master of Science in Management degree at Fudan University in Shanghai, followed by a Ph.D. (Doctor Oeconomiae) at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.