About Damir Tomicic The Story
I am Damir Tomicic: builder of companies, advisor to governments, traveler, and the person this page is about. What follows is the long version of how I got here.
The Japanese call the art of repairing broken things with gold Kintsugi. After thirty years of building, breaking, and learning, I have found this to be equally true of leaders, organizations, and the digital infrastructure of entire continents.
Thirty years. Seventy countries. Four continents. A community of two million.
He is mid-keynote, delivering the most important presentation of his career. The one person he needs to impress, Madame Renou, Director of European Operations, is not watching. She is scrolling through her phone, completely checked out.
Something breaks in him. Not dramatically. More like a thread quietly pulling free. And instead of doubling down on the perfect script he has rehearsed for weeks, he abandons it entirely. He starts speaking from a place he rarely shows anyone: his real failures, his real doubts, his real thinking.
It becomes the most impactful keynote of his career.
He later learns that Madame Renou does not speak English. She was not disinterested. She simply could not understand a word he said. Her apparent rejection had cracked him open, and the cracking had made him better.
This is the story our book opens with. It happened to me.
Before 2024
I co-founded Axinom in 2001 and led it as CEO and CFO for twenty-three years. We built software for aerospace, media, and entertainment, and we built it through economic cycles, technological disruptions, and everything that comes with teams spread across cultures and time zones. I grew up as a leader inside that company.
As co-founder and President Europe, I led the International .NET Association (INETA) for twenty years while it grew into the world's largest Microsoft developer community, more than two million members strong. For another five I served as co-president of IASA, the International Association of Software Architects. Nobody in either was paid to show up. That teaches you what actually makes capable people choose to follow, and no boardroom ever taught me as much.
Somewhere along the way the work started crossing into policy. I worked directly with the European Commission and Parliament on the Digital Single Market, and with the German and Estonian governments on digital identity and e-residency. I have given keynotes at the United Nations, Davos, Harvard, Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the European Parliament, and the U.S. House of Representatives, usually as the one person in the room who had actually shipped software.
For seventeen years Microsoft named me Regional Director for the German-speaking markets, a bridge between their ecosystem and what enterprises actually needed, advising their C-level executives directly. Underneath it all sits my background in theoretical computer science from Friedrich-Alexander University. It still shapes how I work: I evaluate technology at the architecture level, not just the application level.
Since 2024
Everything I learned in the first thirty years now goes into three places.
Founder & CEO
I advise leadership teams on AI strategy, competitive advantage, and organizational transformation. No frameworks from textbooks. Real decisions, real pressure, real results.
Chief Strategist
I lead strategy for Europe's most ambitious event management platform: the software behind events of every size, from executive gatherings to conferences with 150,000 participants.
Distinguished Fellow
I work on digital infrastructure that is sovereign and secure without sacrificing openness. This is where thirty years of building inside European regulatory environments finally pays off.
Causes and communities where I invest time, expertise, and advocacy.
Ambassador
Climate Solutions & Carbon Dioxide Removal
I advocate for carbon dioxide removal at scale and help bridge the gap between climate science and business implementation, working with policymakers and industry toward net-negative emissions.
Ambassador
Digital Accessibility & Responsible AI
Technology should serve everyone, regardless of ability. I promote AI that is transparent, fair, and designed with accessibility at its core rather than as an afterthought.
Mentor
Next-Generation European Tech Leaders
I mentor emerging entrepreneurs and technologists across Europe, sharing what thirty years of building companies taught me and helping the next generation build with purpose.
Advisory Board
AI Governance & Ethics
I contribute to frameworks for responsible AI in enterprises: European AI that keeps human-centric values while remaining globally competitive.
Investment Focus
I invest at the convergence of biotechnology, AI, and preventive medicine. The most consequential technology of the coming decades will be the technology that extends and improves human life.
Coming 2026
On Leading Through Fracture, Not Around It
I am writing it with the systems philosopher and executive coach Thomas Bothe, and it is not a business book in the conventional sense. It distills three decades of building technology companies through the dot-com crash, the financial crisis, and the pandemic into one argument: fracture is not the end of leadership but its raw material.
We disagree about almost everything we can articulate and have learned to disagree beautifully. The book opens with the Madame Renou story. It ends with a question neither author can fully answer.
Pre-order coming soon.
Different domains, one thread. If any of this story connects with yours, damir@tomicic.de reaches me directly, or use the contact page.