Damir Tomicic a personal page

I believe the world can be better.

Not as an abstract idea but as a daily practice. I build companies, shape policy, cross borders, and ask uncomfortable questions because I genuinely think most systems, industries, and institutions can serve people better than they currently do.

This page is not a pitch — I am not selling anything. It is simply me: what I love, what I believe, what I wish for. If something here resonates, write to me. I read everything.

Damir Tomicic — Fürth, Germany. Most days: the same hoodie three days in a row when nobody is looking.

Thirty years of building

I started building software companies in the nineties and never really stopped. Axinom, which I co-founded in 2001 and led for twenty-three years, grew across aerospace, media, and entertainment — through economic cycles, technological disruptions, and the full complexity of teams spread over cultures and time zones. Alongside it I led INETA in Europe, a volunteer developer community that grew past two million members, and spent seventeen years as a Microsoft Regional Director.

The work kept crossing into policy: the European Commission and Parliament on the Digital Single Market, the German and Estonian governments on digital identity, keynotes at the UN Internet Governance Forum and the U.S. House of Representatives. Seventy countries, four continents. I am not telling you this to impress you. It is simply the terrain where everything further down this page was learned.

The cracks

My life has never been short of unexpected turns — challenges arriving from directions I did not anticipate, plans unfolding differently than intended. For a long time I tried to avoid the cracks. I have stopped.

The Japanese call the art of repairing broken things with gold Kintsugi. The repaired object is not hidden or thrown away; the seams of gold are part of its history, and the piece is more beautiful for having been broken. After thirty years of building, breaking, and learning, I have found this to be equally true of people.

The cracks don't diminish. They become gold.

The work now

These days I advise leadership teams on AI strategy at Business in Tech, lead strategy at run.events — where we build the software behind events of every size, from executive retreats to conferences with 150,000 participants — and work on sovereign European digital infrastructure as a Distinguished Fellow at reTECH Europe. I invest where biotechnology, AI, and preventive medicine converge.

And with the systems philosopher Thomas Bothe, a man I disagree with about almost everything we can articulate, I am writing What Breaking Opens, a book about leading through fracture rather than around it. We have learned to disagree beautifully. The book ends with a question neither of us can fully answer.

What I actually do all day

CEO, made easy

People ask what a CEO actually does all day. The honest answer is: everything and nothing you would expect. One hour I am in a boardroom discussing strategy, the next I am troubleshooting why a landing page is not converting. I make decisions that matter and coffee that does not. I have learned that leadership is less about having all the answers and more about being comfortable with not having them — while still moving forward.

What I love

The professional story is only half the picture. These are not hobbies I squeeze in around the edges. They are how I stay curious, connected, and honest about what actually matters.

Travel

I am like a child in a candy store every time I arrive somewhere new. Over seventy countries and I still press my nose against the glass. Every place has taught me something I did not know I needed to learn.

Music

Music has been with me since I was a child. It is where I find strength when things are hard, calm when things are loud, and ideas when I am stuck. I play piano with more enthusiasm than skill, and I would not have it any other way.

Sport

Training comes first on my calendar, not last. A trained body gives the mind space to be creative, to think clearly, to push further — and when I skip a week, I notice it in my decisions before I notice it anywhere else.

Food

You think you are sharing a bite but you are sharing a culture, an intention, a moment of genuine human connection. I have had the most meaningful conversations at tables where nobody spoke the same language.

Stillness

Stillness keeps me connected to what actually matters when everything around me is moving fast — which, in my life, is most of the time. The body usually knows before I do. I have learned to listen.

Yoga and Ayurveda found me at the right moment and never left.

Comedy

The gap between how seriously we take ourselves and how little that seriousness actually matters. A room that has laughed together can do almost anything together.

Inspiration

I find inspiration in the industry that stopped asking why. That curiosity has taken me into media, entertainment, aerospace, and now events. I have learned to follow it without asking where we are going.

I find joy easily. A good comedy special. A perfect meal. A conversation that goes somewhere neither person expected. These are not small things to me. They are the point.

Things I believe

Respect is a practice I keep returning to: genuinely valuing how another person sees the world, especially when that view challenges my own.
Technology that excludes people is not innovation. It is a more efficient version of what already exists.
Background, circumstance, and geography should not determine who gets access to excellent technology, meaningful work, or the chance to contribute. Equal chances is not idealism. It is a design requirement.
The planet does not need more awareness. It needs more action.
Systems that shape millions of lives deserve people inside them who know how systems actually work — and are honest enough to say when they are not working.
A well-timed joke can shift the energy of an entire room. This is not a small thing. It might be the whole thing.

Where I stand

The causes I give time, name, and advocacy to.

Responsible AI & Inclusion

Technology that does not serve everyone is not progress. It is efficiency in the service of the status quo. I find that unacceptable — and I say so.

Climate Action

As Ambassador for the Carbon Drawdown Initiative, I work on carbon dioxide removal — helping bridge climate science and business so that net-negative emissions become real, not rhetorical.

Political Engagement

I have worked inside the systems — the European Commission and Parliament, the German and Estonian governments — long enough to know that showing up beats commenting from the outside.

Some wishes

Not goals. Not a roadmap. Wishes — the kind you work toward anyway.

That Europe builds digital infrastructure that is sovereign and secure without sacrificing openness.

I work on this at reTECH Europe.
That carbon dioxide removal scales fast enough to matter — net-negative, not just net-zero.

As Ambassador for the Carbon Drawdown Initiative.
That AI is built transparent, fair, and accessible from the start — not retrofitted after the harm.

With IThilft and the European AI Forum.
That the next generation of European builders gets the guidance I had to find the hard way.

Mentoring in the EU BEFuture Programme.
That we treat extending healthy human life as the most consequential technology of the coming decades.

Where I invest: biotech, AI, preventive medicine.

That's me. Your turn.

If anything on this page made you think, smile, or disagree — I would genuinely like to hear it. No forms-into-the-void: damir@tomicic.de reaches me directly, or use the contact page.

Set in Fraunces & Newsreader · Built with Astro in Fürth, Germany · The gold in the seams is Kintsugi