Tom Hayes holds an MA in German from the University of Tennessee and a TEFL certificate from the University of Utah. He also studied in Germany and taught German in the United States. He worked as a US diplomat in Consular Affairs and the Economic Section in Cote d’Ivoire, Uganda, and Panama. He was a newspaper reporter and editor at various daily newspapers in Mississippi, Utah, and Arkansas in the United States. He taught TEFL, US foreign policy, and journalism classes in various countries, including Saudi Arabia, Armenia, Vanuatu, Hungary, and Slovakia. He currently chairs the Department of General Education at the American University of Kurdistan.