In his 60’s, Tom is in his most productive years. He is the co-founder of Resilient Ventures, a $3.5 million committed capital Investment fund created to disrupt the disparities in access and opportunity for African-American entrepreneurs. Resilient Ventures delivers access to capital, networks, and expertise to companies that are ready to scale.

Tom’s private equity knowledge started in the 1960’s when he watched his dad go from startup to IPO with Applied Logic, a Princeton, NJ Computer Timesharing company.  Tom’s company took Angel funding as a result of the 1988 CED Venture Fair, but has self funded since then.  Since 2016 he has been part of the Angel Investor network, RTP Capital, and with Resilient Ventures has developed expertise in venture investing, including deal flow, screening, due diligence, follow on investing, portfolio management, and deal negotiations.  With his co-founder, Keith Daniel, Resilient Ventures has built a reputation of action and integrity.

In his day job, Tom is the president of Droege Computing Services, Inc. a software development and IT services firm founded in 1985. Tom has built more than 30 enterprise systems including Auction Management, Inventory and Purchasing Systems, Patient Care Systems, and Toxicology. 

Back in the day, Tom wrote from experience for some of the industry’s most coveted publications including PC Magazine, Popular Computing, Data Based Advisor, and Midnight Engineering. He was also the brains behind the Developers Competition, the largest software competition worldwide. Tom was a charter member of the CED Software Roundtable, co-founder of the CED Quality Roundtable, and founding board member of NCTA, the North Carolina Technologies Association. As his career developed, he created StampAuctionNetwork.com, the top stamp auction site in the world, and became a subject matter expert in auctions of all kinds, but specifically wine and stamp auctions.

Tom started out at the University of Illinois and holds a BS in Engineering Physics, where he worked in particle Physics building detection equipment for FERMILab.

While he has enjoyed decades of achievement, Tom’s greatest success was marrying his wife Paula in 1981. Together they have 5 children and 7 grandchildren. And he is looking forward to his second-most productive years, his 70’s.