Annette Thomas started her career as a scientist, receiving a degree in Biochemistry and Biophysics from Harvard and a PhD in Cell Biology and Neuroscience from Yale University. She has gone on to forge a career in publishing spanning over 20 years. She joined Macmillan Publishing Group in 1993 as Cell Biology editor for Nature, she was the launch editor of Nature Cell Biology and went on create and launch the Nature Reviews series. She became Managing Director of Nature Publishing Group in 2000 and Chief Executive of Macmillan Publishers in 2007.

Always focused on innovation that advances scientific research, she created the start-up incubator, Digital Science, in 2010 and was appointed CEO of Macmillan Science and Education when it was created in 2011.