Thomas J. Peters (born November 7, 1942) is an American writer on business management practices, best-known for, In Search of Excellence (co-authored with Robert H. Waterman, Jr).

Peters was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He went to Severn School for High School and attended Cornell University, receiving a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1965, and a master's degree in 1966. He then studied business at Stanford Business School, receiving an M.B.A. and Ph.D.. In 2004, he also received an honorary doctorate from the State University of Management in Moscow.

From 1966 to 1970, he served in the United States Navy, making two deployments to Vietnam as a Navy Seabee, then later working in the Pentagon. From 1973 to 1974, he worked in the White House as a senior drug-abuse advisor, during the Nixon administration. Peters has acknowledged the influence of military strategist Colonel John Boyd on his later writing.

From 1974 to 1981, Peters worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, becoming a partner and Organization Effectiveness practice leader in 1979, and then in 1981, he went solo and became an independent consultant.

In 1990, Tom Peters was honoured by the British Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) as one of the world's Quality Gurus.

In 2008, Peters was awarded the number 3 rank on the international Leadership Gurus survey right after Robin Sharma in the number 2 spot. The “Leadership Gurus 30” award, by Global Gurus International identifies the top Leadership professionals in the world by merit and public voting.His simplycity of life had given agreat success in his personal life..