Thomas Parkinson

Tom Parkinson is Illinois Ventures' Senior Director, based in Champaign-Urbana. He has been investing in, mentoring and advising technology-based startup companies for more than 30 years. The team relies on Tom for his extensive knowledge of hardware, software, engineering, and SaaS technologies.

Prior to joining the Illinois Ventures team, Tom was a partner with a Chicago-based venture capital firm, where he helped raise and manage two venture capital funds that invested in under-served and fly-over parts of the country. He ran a successful seed capital fund affiliated with Northwestern University during the 1990s, and was CFO of an award-winning technology business incubator.

Alongside his work in technology investing, Tom is a passionate educator. He is currently teaching an iMBA course in Entrepreneurship at the Gies College of Business at UIUC. With 1,243 students enrolled, this is the largest known entrepreneurship course in the world.

Tom has also taught entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial finance at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Ohio University, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. Previously, Tom taught the capstone class in Kellogg’s Discover-Test-Launch sequence for student entrepreneurs for four years. His students from Kellogg have gone on to launch more than a dozen new businesses in the US and around the world, raising nearly $200 million in venture capital.

Tom is a member of the National Advisory Committee for Pipeline, a prestigious entrepreneurial fellowship program based in Kansas City.