Thomas Hustad attended Purdue for electronical engineering and hosted a weekly jazz radio program, eventually becoming president of Purdue's radio network. Tom Hustad is Emeritus Professor of Marketing and a past chairperson of the MBA program at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. He is a Certified New Product Development Professional and has served in various capacities on the faculties of York University in Toronto and as a visiting faculty member at City University of Hong Kong, CEU Business School in Budapest, Steinbeis University in Berlin, University of Limerick in Ireland and University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. He was the 1981 president of the Product Development and Management Association. He is presently a member of PDMA's Board of Directors and was also a director of the PDMA Foundation. He is founder and was long time editor (15 years) of the Journal of Product Innovation Management and was appointed a Crawford Fellow of Innovation in 1993. At IU, Tom was appointed the John Kosin Faculty Fellow for the ten-year duration of this position. He recently served as interim director of IU's Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. The Nestlé-Hustad Professorship and Fellowship was created and fully endowed by Nestlé in his honor on March 1, 2007.

"The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) is a global community of thousands of members whose skills, expertise and experience power the most recognized and respected innovative companies in the world. [...] Since 1976, PDMA is the only organization that focuses on the unique set of integrated activities involved in the full lifecycle of product development and management, including innovation. The founding principle is that successful commercialization of products and innovation, from concept through end of life exit, takes efficient cross-organizational effort." - PDMA.org