Mr. Oakes is the founder and chief executive of The Acorn Group, which invests in and coachesearly stage technology companies in the information technology, internet, telecommunicationsand biosciences industries. He received his Bachelor in Aeronautical Engineering, with honors,in 1959 from Georgia Tech. Over the next four years, he alternated work with the formerDouglas Aircraft and the Rand Corporation (ANSER) with graduate school, receiving a SM inAeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 1961 and a MBA from Harvard in 1963. Mr. Oakesjoined Booz Allen& Hamilton for two years, before forming a start-up engineering firm in 1965,which was subsequently sold in 1981..Since 1981, Mr. Oakes has invested in and contributed to the growth of over ten small tomid size engineering, specialty manufacturing, space transportation, computer science, andgovernment consulting companies. In seven of these firms, he served as president or CEO.These firms ran the gamut from being acquired, becoming ESOPs, or in one case, failing (Mr.Oakes became chairman of the creditors committee, returning about 40 cents on the dollar toseveral creditor classes). In late 1996, he “ retired” from assuming operating responsibilities inhis investments, and founded the Acorn Group to invest in, and be an active Board Member of,technology start-ups.

Mr. Oakes presently serves on the Board of, and as an advisor to, early stage software,information technology and bioscience/health technology companies, including NeurostarSolutions, Inc., Buildtopia, Inc., InfoEther Inc., and SiviX Corporation. He is a limited partnerin Blue Water Capital, LLC, a later stage venture capital firm, and Director and co-Founderof the Maryland Angels’ Council, a group of angel investors from technology companies supporting start-up technology and bioscience businesses in the region. He also has been anelected Director of The Technology Council of Maryland for eight years and formerly served asChairman of its Information Technology Network. He is a 50+ year member of the AmericanInstitute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).

Mr. Oakes is an elected member of the Georgia Tech Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni as well as a 2010 member of its Engineering Hall of Fame, and a past appointed memberfor six years of the Georgia Tech President’ s Advisory Board. He is a founding member of theIndustry Advisory Board of TI:GER (Technology Innovation: Generating Economic Returns),a multidisciplinary graduate education program in entrepreneurship and technology transferat Georgia Tech and Emory University, initially funded by the NSF, with support from theKaufman Foundation He is an invited lecturer in the School of Management and to the TI:GERstudents. He regularly reviews, provides feedback and guidance to the technology and businessplans of the TI:GER teams. Over the past ten years, Mr. Oakes has been an evaluator for theGeorgia Tech Business Plan Competition Finals. In 2007, he was appointed to the Board of theGeorgia Tech Research Institute, the university’ s international applied research center. GTRIhas annual revenues of over $140M and a research staff of over 1,000 engineers and scientists.Since 2009, Mr. Oakes has been an ex officio member of the External Advisory Board of theGeorgia Tech School of Aerospace Engineering, ranked by the “ US News and World Report” inthe top three Aerospace Engineering academic programs in the US.