Tom is a partner at Blu Venture Investors. Serving in various senior executive roles for over 20 years at technology and IT services companies, Tom’s leadership and strong sense of teamwork and collaboration has generated over $1B+ total revenues for start-up, small, mid-tier
and large companies. These companies include SERCO (public), CGI (public), DMI (acquired), CACI (public), ICF (IPO), PEC Solutions (acquired), and DynCorp (acquired). These companies and their early stage, innovation, emerging tech partners selected him to successfully open up,
acquire and grow new business lines, leveraging the latest disruptive technologies to achieve performance improvements and provide nationwide, innovative programs that deliver critical
services to businesses, citizens and communities.
 

Leading and driving the development of emerging IT solutions for these companies, Tom’s growth success is grounded in blending the experience and training he brings from the world of high-stakes diplomacy and trade negotiation, along with a consultative selling approach that has
resulted in the successful delivery of transformative technologies to key market segments.
 

Tom is a former U.S. State Department Foreign Service Officer (representing U.S. national and business interests at American Embassies in Madrid, Santo Domingo, Caracas, and cross-regional sector assignments in Latin America, Europe, and Maghreb regions), and also served at
the Executive Office of the President as Senior Trade Policy Adviser and Negotiator. His undergraduate degrees in Economics and Political Science are from the University of California at Berkeley, and his Masters's Degrees in Public Administration and International Affairs are from
the University of Pennsylvania.
 
To keep the ‘battle rhythm’ going, in his spare time, Tom runs obstacle course races (OCR) such as Spartan, Savage, and other OCR races.

 

Tom has continually sought those new technologies, acquisitions, partnerships, and solutions to improve a customer’s mission delivery. If you do right by helping your customers achieve their mission, then success -- whether an eventual exit, sustained double-digit growth or other goal --
usually follows.
 

 

Our great national economic and democratic structure has set things up to spur on those with significant entrepreneurial drive. One result, however, is that we create MANY mouse traps. Which are the best ones that leverage disruptive technologies, address a growing market, grow its customer base, stay on a strong financial path, and bring team experience and grit to
withstand the turbulence of achieving liftoff.

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To use the rocket liftoff metaphor, when a rocket starts to lift from the ground, is that when you abort the mission? No, by then you should already know the current customer base, and whether or not the new solution can make a significant dent in an addressable market.

Additionally, you need to have already acted decisively, with the right information at the right time with the right team, to critically shape your market position so that a follow-on round is akin to a standard operating procedure (SOP) countdown, where all key settings have been
checked, tested and readied for liftoff.

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