Tomas B.
Reyes
Founder & Principal · tbr ChangeWorks
Thirty years of leading operational improvement, global sourcing, and enterprise risk across some of the most demanding environments in manufacturing and financial services. The practice is built on what that experience taught — that lasting change is built with the people who do the work, grounded in evidence, and connected to the outcomes that matter.
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt
GE Energy
Kaizen Facilitator
GE CEO's Lean Transformation
MBA · Management
UNC Kenan-Flagler
BS · Industrial Engineering
INTEC, Dominican Republic
4 U.S. Patents
Product & manufacturing design
Bilingual
English · Spanish
Thirty years.
One through-line.
The career began on the shop floor — as a manufacturing engineer at GE's electrical distribution and controls business, learning how things actually get made, where designs meet reality, and how small decisions compound into large outcomes. Four U.S. patents came out of that period, alongside a foundational belief that the people closest to the work see things that no report captures.
From there, a progression through global commodity management, operational risk, enterprise sourcing, and corporate learning — each chapter building on the one before it. Managing $600M in raw materials across 100+ manufacturing sites required the same evidence-based discipline as building the first enterprise risk framework at a $100B regulated leasing portfolio. The methods differ. The rigor doesn't.
"Every role added a lens. The engineer learned to see waste. The sourcing leader learned to see risk. The risk leader learned to see drift. The advisor brings all three."
The final chapter at GE was spent at the Crotonville campus — governing $30–50M in corporate learning spend, leading kaizen events for surgical and aerospace operations, and supporting the university partnership that trained the top 1,000 GE executives on Lean transformation. That work surfaced a question that tbr ChangeWorks is built to answer: what does it take to make improvement last after the program ends?
2025 – Present
Founder & Principal
tbr ChangeWorks, LLC
Advisory practice — process improvement, strategic sourcing, operational risk, and AI-enabled execution.
2024 – 2025
Executive Director, Strategic Initiatives
Education Advocacy, Connecticut
Community engagement, evidence-base development, and school approval advocacy across Connecticut.
2018 – 2023
Global L&D Sourcing Leader
GE — Crotonville Campus
$30–50M annual L&D spend. $14M+ in audited savings. 1,000+ contracts/year. Kaizen facilitation for surgical and aerospace operations.
2015 – 2018
HQ Indirect Sourcing Leader
GE Capital — Norwalk, CT
$800M+ annual spend. $50B in divestitures supported. Contract cycle time cut 60% through MSA/SOW redesign.
2005 – 2015
Enterprise Risk & Operational Risk Leadership
GE Capital Americas
Built first RCSA, KRI, and ILD programs post-SIFI designation. Led 4 CCAR stress tests. PD/LGD models covering $100B+ in exposure.
2003 – 2005
Lean Leader — Order to Remittance
GE Energy — Houston, TX
20+ kaizen events. $8M WIP reduction. 25% cycle time improvement. 641 SKUs converted to pull systems.
1994 – 2003
Global Commodity & Sourcing Leadership
GE Industrial Systems
$600M raw materials across 100+ sites. $200M non-ferrous metals book. $150M in reverse e-auctions in a single year.
1991 – 1994
Manufacturing Engineer & Shop Operations
GE ED&C — Mebane, NC & Arecibo, PR
Where it started. Shop floor, ISO9002, ergonomics, and 4 co-authored U.S. patents.
What drives the work
also lives outside it.
The same instincts that make improvement work sustainable — curiosity, endurance, showing up consistently, and caring about outcomes for people who aren't in the room — show up in other parts of life too. These aren't hobbies kept separate from the work. They're expressions of the same orientation.
01
Curiosity over assumption
On a trail, on a bike, or in a plant — the instinct is to look before concluding. Evidence first.
02
Improvement is for everyone
The same discipline that improves a supply chain can improve a school system or a community. The tools differ. The mindset doesn't.
03
Show up consistently
Endurance — in work, on the road, in civic life — is built through repeated small commitments, not single heroic efforts.
Why tbr ChangeWorks.
After three decades inside large organizations — building systems, leading transformations, and watching what holds and what doesn't — the work now is to bring that depth to organizations that need it without the overhead that comes with size.
tbr ChangeWorks is a deliberately small practice. That is a design choice, not a limitation. It means every engagement involves direct senior judgment — not a team of analysts and a methodology deck. The tools are AI-assisted and the approach is data-informed, but the work is hands-on and the accountability is personal.
"Where better becomes sustainable — not by mandate, but by design."
Operational credibility
Every recommendation comes from someone who has led the work — not observed it from the outside. The floor, the negotiating table, the risk committee, and the executive learning campus are all part of the background.
Evidence before prescription
Diagnosis precedes design. Every engagement starts with observation and data — not a pre-packaged solution fitted to a situation it wasn't built for.
AI as an accelerator
Generative AI is embedded across research, synthesis, communication, and workflow design — compressing the time from insight to action while keeping human judgment in governance.
Capability transfer built in
The goal of every engagement is a team that owns the standard, can improve it, and doesn't need us to sustain it. Knowledge transfer is not an add-on — it is the measure of success.
Ready to start a
conversation?
A 30-minute intro call is the right first step — no pitch, no proposal. Just a direct conversation about what you're working on and whether this is the right fit.