Tom began his career as a primary school teacher before moving into secondary education as Head of Computer Science.
As Computer Science became a formal subject in schools, Tom did what many teachers found themselves doing. Teaching it meant learning it first. He picked up coding out of necessity, and then couldn't stop. What started as curriculum prep turned into a genuine passion, and eventually, a career change.
Tom moved into software, progressing from developer to Director of Software Engineering.
That career shift didn't leave the classroom behind. It brought it along. Tom carried something most developers don't: a teacher's eye for when a group is genuinely working together versus just going through the motions. He'd seen what disengagement does. In a classroom where students don't feel comfortable, hands stay down and opinions stay unspoken. In a remote team, it looks the same — people sat two desks apart barely knowing each other, video calls dominated by one voice while everyone else stayed silent.
So he tried something simple. A 30-minute quiz call every week. No budget, no outside facilitator, just a shared Google Doc and a willingness to look slightly ridiculous. After a few weeks, something started shifting. The quiet people were suddenly talking. Cross-functional friction dropped. Video calls became genuinely collaborative — people comfortable enough to speak their mind, challenge each other, and disagree in a way that felt safe rather than loaded.
It worked. But creating fresh content every week became unsustainable. That's when Gatherilla became inevitable.
Gatherilla is built on everything that experience taught him: the belief that connection isn't a soft metric, it's what makes teams actually work. Every game is designed so managers don't need to prepare anything in advance, teams can jump straight in without being told how to play, and nobody gets left behind — because the best team activities work for everyone, not just the loudest people in the room.
Tom writes about it the way he lived it: not from a consultant's slide deck, but from years of watching what happens when people finally start showing up for each other.