Thomas Prommer is a technology executive with more than two decades building and scaling engineering organizations at Fortune 500 companies and high-growth startups.
As Global SVP Engineering at Adidas, Thomas led an organization of 500+ engineers, unifying fragmented regional teams into a single global engineering function powering a $9B+ e-commerce operation across 50 markets. He drove platform modernization, infrastructure consolidation, and the digital transformation behind the brand's omni-channel retail strategy. Before Adidas, he was Chief Information Officer at Sweetgreen, where he built the technology function from scratch, modernized point-of-sale, and launched the digital ordering platform that now drives the majority of the company's revenue. Earlier, as President, Technology at Huge (IPG), he grew the technology practice from 50 to 500+ engineers across 14 global offices, winning and delivering enterprise engagements for Apple, Google, McDonald's, Toyota, and Nike.
Today Thomas is Group CEO and CTAIO of We The Flywheel, an AI-native digital group company built from five operating businesses: Flywheel Motion (mission-led brand acceleration), Flywheel Media (a performance media network of 500+ owned properties across 42 markets), Flywheel Sports (independent sports journalism for the open web), Flywheel Studio (a product studio pairing spec-driven development with agentic coding), and Flywheel Advisory (AI consultancy, digital transformation, and technical due diligence for PE, VC, and founders).
In March 2026 he co-founded Flywheel Motion with Andi Cross, after her Edges of Earth research expedition surfaced a structural problem: the people doing the most important environmental and mission-led work in the world were almost entirely undiscoverable online, and it was costing them funding, access, and attention. Flywheel Motion builds the fix — technical SEO, structured content, and the citation signals that get real work found by search engines and AI systems. Thomas was the first test case. His own site, prommer.net, went from a dormant baseline to 61,000+ Google Search Console impressions and 1,149 qualified clicks in April 2026 alone: a 1,700x impression lift in four months, with first-place rankings across four languages and zero paid spend.
Alongside the group, Thomas advises investors on technology. He has been engaged by Bain Capital, Berenberg Capital Markets, Emmeline Ventures, and McKinsey for technical due diligence, platform evaluation, and technology market research, and is a top-percentile contributor across the major expert networks. He was named to the HotTopics Global CIO 2026, a peer-nominated, independently judged list of the world's most influential technology leaders.
He writes independently on AI strategy and the emerging CTAIO role at prommer.net and ctaio.dev.
Areas of expertise
Where Thomas operates
AI strategy and the CTAIO role
Enterprise AI strategy and adoption · the emerging Chief Technology & AI Officer mandate · agentic coding and AI-assisted delivery · AI governance and build-vs-buy · AI search and citation (how models decide who to quote)
Engineering leadership at scale
Building and scaling organizations from 50 to 500+ engineers · consolidating fragmented regional teams into a single global function · multi-market operations (50 markets, 14 offices) · engineering org design, hiring, and operating cadence · platform modernization and infrastructure consolidation
Digital transformation and commerce
$9B+ e-commerce platform ownership · omni-channel retail · point-of-sale modernization · digital ordering platforms · enterprise architecture · data platforms and analytics
Technical due diligence and investor advisory
Technology due diligence for PE and VC · product, architecture, and team validation · platform and vendor evaluation · technology market research · enterprise software spend · engaged by Bain Capital, Berenberg Capital Markets, Emmeline Ventures, and McKinsey
Digital visibility and the attention economy
Technical SEO and search infrastructure · structured content and topic architecture · multilingual search · building discoverability as an engineering discipline rather than a marketing one