Born and raised in Curaçao, Thomas believes that real change begins from the ground up, with education, curiosity, and courage. As Chairman of the Board of Directors of both GI-RO Settlement Holding N.V. and the Vereniging voor Protestants Christelijk Onderwijs (VPCO), he moves comfortably between the worlds of finance and education, convinced that the two are intertwined: that a society’s economy can only thrive if its children are free to think, create, and question.

Thomas studied Politics and International Law at Georgetown University and the University of Lyon, and holds a Master of Science in Euromanagement from Norway. He recently also earned an AI Prompt Engineering Certificate from Vanderbilt University, combining his analytical background with an understanding of technology’s role in shaping human progress.

During thirty years, Thomas has led transformation projects for ABN Amro, ING, and Rabobank, and served as a Director at Banco Sicredi, Brazil’s largest cooperative banking institution. Later, he was CEO of Castrolanda Agroindustrial, one of Brazil’s largest agricultural cooperatives.

In 2021, whilst serving as a “somewhat silent” trustee on behalf of the CBCS at the ACU Credit Cooperative, he took on Curaçao’s most complex financial clean-up: restructuring Girobank’s 9,500-loan portfolio through GI-RO Settlement Holding. And also ensuring that a 170-million-guilder sovereign loan would be repaid to the Netherlands. What was projected to take 15 years, GSH aims to complete in six, reducing NPLs from 86% to below 25% in 4 years and setting a new standard for public-private recovery through non-conventional credit design and behavior monitoring models, and extensive economic analysis of consumer markets, inflation, and housing prices for lending performance predictability.

Beyond the numbers, Thomas sees his role as helping societies regain trust, competence, and freedom of thought.