Tom Scholl

BA 1970, Philosophy
General Partner, Novak Biddle Venture Partners
Bethesda, Maryland

Tom is a successful entrepreneur and investor with experience sitting on both sides of the boardroom table. He has over twenty-five years experience in communications systems, equipment, chipsets and software, and has been active in the high-tech start-up scene in the Washington metro area for over 15 years. Growing up, Tom was an avid Ham radio operator, the valedictorian of his high school in Greencastle, Indiana, and an Eagle Scout.

In addition Tom sits on the boards of portfolio companies Centice, Paratek, Princeton Optronics, Fiberzone Networks and Avail TVN, and has previously participated on the boards of Command Information (acquired by Salient Federal Solutions) and Digital Bridge Communications.

In 1990, Tom founded Telogy Networks, a leader in providing embedded communications software products for wireless and IP networks. Telogy's award-winning products were proven market successes with world-class customers such as Cisco, Motorola, Samsung, Nortel, Alcatel and NEC. In 1998, Motorola purchased Telogy's digital cellular technology and development team for over $40M and in 1999, Texas Instruments purchased Telogy as the leader in embedded VOIP softwarefor over $700M.

Prior to joining Novak Biddle, Tom co-founded and was chairman of Cognio, a developer of spectrum management and MIMO antenna technology for wireless applications. Cognio was acquired by Cisco in October 2007. Tom has also served as a Director of Torrent Networking, acquired by Ericsson, and Integrated Telecom, acquired by PMC Sierra.

In 2011, Tom was voted and awarded the Venture Capital "Friend of the Entrepreneur" by the Washington Business Journal. In 1995, Tom was recognized as the Joseph A. Sciulli "Entrepreneur of the Year" by the Maryland High Technology Council. Prior to Telogy, Tom was Senior Vice President of Engineering at Hughes Network Systems, a combination of M/A-Com DCC and Linkabit.

Tom is a member of the Board of Trustees at the University of Maryland and the Stevens Institute of Technology. He is Chairman of the Board of Visitors at the A. James Clark School of Engineering at UMD and Chairman of the Research and Entrepreneurship Committee at Stevens. He is also a member of the Dean's Advisory Council of the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University, receiving Purdue's Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2009.

Tom has six patents relating to software, the Internet, and digital telephone systems, and he is the author of "Packet Switching" in McGraw Hill's Electronic Communications Handbook. He's a member of IEEE and ACM, and participated in the Executive Management (non-degree) program at MIT Sloan School. Tom is Chairman of the Tom and Susan Scholl Family Foundation.