Thomas is Senior Director of Digital Marketing and a partner at Compass Digital, a full-service digital marketing agency in San Diego managing client engagements across paid media, SEO, email and CRM, content, and web production. He came to marketing by way of science, with a degree in Pharmacological Chemistry from UC San Diego, then traded the lab for a field that gave him more room to create while keeping the same analytical discipline. That background shows up in his work: direct, evidence-backed strategy, the kind that survives contact with real budgets and real challenges.
Thomas leads the agency’s AI transformation, authoring its internal AI playbook, redesigning core operational AI systems, and training teams to work at the intersection of human judgment and machine leverage. His current focus is the frontier where marketing is being remade: answer engine optimization (AEO), generative engine optimization (GEO), and AI-native paid media like Google’s Performance Max and AI Max, helping clients win visibility in a world where AI increasingly decides what gets seen.
His path there ran through several markets. He studied abroad in Japan, cut his teeth in marketing in Korea building and promoting mobile apps, worked the San Francisco startup scene, and spent time in Australia on Tourism Australia’s website. That mix gave him genuine cross-cultural fluency in brand and market strategy. He’s based in San Diego now, where he’s usually thinking about the next client problem, the next market shift, or occasionally his next travel destination.
