Thomas Hayton is Vice President for Sales, Marketing and Services, Taiwan Hong Kong & Macau at World Family English and a member of the company’s Executive Committee. The company is Disney’s largest global publishing licensing partner and creator of the Disney World of English product and related services which it sells direct to consumers.

Before joining World Family in August 2017, Tom was based in Shanghai running the Asia Education business as Regional Director, Education, Asia for Macmillan Education, a part of Springer Nature.

Tom has twenty years of entrepreneurial and business leadership experience at the intersection of technology and education. He has deep understanding of APAC markets, having lived and worked in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China. He holds an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Warwick University; an MBA from the UK’s Cranfield School of Management where he received a maximum scholarship and won the Odgers prize; and a Masters in Global Diplomacy from the University of London, SOAS. He has fluent Mandarin, rusty Japanese and some Korean.

In the early 2000’s Tom invested in and was later CFO of an online learning startup that created IPTV and broadband-delivered early learning content to Asian markets. This business grew into Studycat, whose apps have been featured on Apple Store display devices and highlighted on Google Play. Studycat’s achievements to date include becoming a Top-5 grossing iOS education app in 100+ countries and Top-5 downloaded iPad education app in 122 countries.

Tom moved from entrepreneurship into educational publishing for Oxford University Press in Hong Kong, where he became Asia Regional Director for Oxford’s Global Business Development team with a remit to license the Press’s lexical and educational content to major technology partners, before joining Springer Nature and moving to Shanghai.

Tom remains an advisory board member at Studycat and a Country Ambassador at HundrED.