[4] Born in Mozambique, Tomé completed a degree in economics from the Catholic University of Portugal, with an academic merit award received from former Portuguese President Mario Soares.

[15][16] She has been recognized for her contributions to Mozambican and Portuguese culture,[17] and has published several books of poetry and fiction.

[18] Tomé is also a singer, and at age 7 won a Southern Africa music content held by the World Health Organization.

[19] Aidoo Lamonte and Daniel F. Silva, who translated and introduced Tomé's literary works in Lusophone African Short Stories and Poetry after Independence: Decolonial Destinies (2021), described her unusual career:[1] Throughout the 2010s, Tomé became a public figure of sorts, opening her own business consulting firm in Mozambique ... she has given TED talks and toured as a motivational speaker, targeting generations of Mozambican, Lusophone, and international audiences with facile notions of individual agency that dissimulate existing structures of marginalization.

At the same time ... she has articulated, though, tacitly, relations of solidarity between the Mozambican state and other left-leaning governments in the Global South.