Walsh, Mark
U.S. Small Business Administration
Associate Administrator for Innovation & Investment
Mark Walsh is the Office of Investment and Innovation’s new Associate Administrator. Mark has over 30+ years of experience as a technology entrepreneur, manager and investor. Prior to SBA, Mark was executive chairman of Homesnap.com, a “prosumer” platform/app for residential real-estate backed by Revolution Ventures and CEO and Co-founder of GeniusRocket, a leading provider of crowd-sourced marketing for major brands and global non-profits. He has been a division head and senior executive at technology and content companies, like GE, AOL, HBO and others.
Mark was the CEO and Chairman of VerticalNet, a leading provider of B2B “communities of commerce”. He took the company public on the NASDAQ in 1999, and was named one of Upside Magazine Elite 100 leaders of global technology in 2000 and CEO of the year by the Eastern Technology Council in 2001.
More recently, Mark has been an active angel investor, shareholder or board member/advisor in a number of successful start-ups and high growth companies like: BlackBoard (NASDAQ: BBBB), NutriSystems, (NASDAQ: NTRI), Thestreet.com (NADAQ: TST), Day Software (Bought by Adobe), Verical.com (Bought by Arrow Electronics), half.com (Bought by eBay), Sensics-HUD Technology, LifeShield.com (bought by DirectTV) and many others. He has been named one of 100 “Tech-Titans” by Washingtonian Magazine for each edition since 2009 until today.
Mark was an entrepreneur-in-residence, then chairman of the board of advisors to the DIngman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland, and is on the board of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a DC based thought leader and think-tank. He is active in other not for profits, having served on the boards of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony and the NY Theatre Workshop (where the play “Rent” debuted).
Mark has also been very active in U.S. politics, serving as the first Chief Technology Advisor to the Democratic National Committee and Head of Internet operations for the Kerry Presidential Campaign in 2004. He was the founding chairman of the New Leaders Council, a mentoring and training organization for young progressives with chapters in 45 cities.
Mark holds a BA from Union College in NY, and was the chair of their board of Trustees. He received his MBA from the Harvard Business School.