Mark Grovic

Mark Grovic co-founded New Markets Venture Partners in 2003 and is a General Partner. Mark serves or has served on the Board of Directors for The American Academy, Innovative Biosensors, Lightningcast (sold to NYSE: TWX), Moodlerooms (sold to Blackboard) and Workspace.com. Mark also serves or has served as a board observer for Aldagen (sold to NASDAQ: CMXI), American Honors College, Andera, Appfluent, BioSET, ConnectEDU, MediaSolv, Overture Technologies, Paratek Microwave (sold to NASDAQ: RIMM), Questar Assessment, and Vision Chain. Mark also co-founded LifeJourney, an online educational company that allows students to test drive real life careers in specific corporations.
Mark has been investing in high growth companies since 1992. Prior to New Markets, Mark was a Portfolio Manager for the Small Enterprise Assistance Funds (SEAF), a $200 million managed emerging market venture capital company, Director of Estonia-based Baltic Small Equity Fund, a Co-Founder and Principal of the Templeton Emerging Europe Fund, as Principal of Templeton Direct Advisors, and a Portfolio Manager of Private Equities at the Calvert Group.
Mark is a VC in Residence and Professor of Venture Capital and Ethics at the R.H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland (UMD). He has 14 years experience in higher education as an instructor, administrator, and serves as an advisor to numerous technology transfer, incubator, and entrepreneurship bodies in the mid-Atlantic.  He has earned three awards for his instruction at UMD and at Howard University, plus a fellowship awarded for the innovative use of technology in the classroom.
Mark helped to found and served as Board Director of the Baltimore Chapter of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), is Board Chair at Emerson Preparatory High School in Washington, D.C. and serves as Chair of the Business Advisory Board of Venture Philanthropy Partner’s Youth Connect program which includes: KIPP DC; College Summit; Latin American Youth Center; Metro Teen Aids; Urban Alliance; and Year Up.
Mark graduated with Honors from the University of California, Berkeley, where he majored in Political Economies and received a Juris Doctor from the Georgetown University, where his focus was in international, tax, and corporate law. Mark has also completed graduate work in accounting and finance at the George Washington University and Pace University, and completed the Private Equity and Venture Capital Executive Program at Harvard Business School. Mark lives in Silver Spring, MD with his wife and two children and is a mediocre musician and triathlete.