Thomas is a career foreign service officer with the U.S. Department of State. He has served at the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; as a political officer in the U.S. Embassy, Tokyo; as the principal advisor on U.N. and Global Affairs at the U.S. Mission to the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and most recently as the political and economic officer at the U.S. Consulate in Fukuoka, Japan. A New Englander who now calls California home, he and his wife have three children born on three different continents who have grown up primarily on two other continents.