Business Background
Dr. Tomas Valis joined Celtic House in 1996. Following an initial career in both academic research and industrial R&D, he switched to the world of finance, becoming an analyst in the technology capital markets.
Tom is a domain expert in telecommunications, networking and computing with a focus on product strategy. As a financial analyst, he worked extensively with Positron Fiber Systems and led its successful private placement in 1996. The understanding of the fundamental technologies developed by Positron were applied to Skystone Systems, one of his early investment projects at Celtic House and the basis of Cisco R&D Canada (following their acquisition). Tom was co-architect of the highly successful (post-acquisition by Nortel Networks) Optera Metro Optical Networking product line at Cambrian Systems and was a co-author of the foundational IP.
Today, Tom is viewed by his peers as a leader in repositioning telecommunications and networking teams and skills to address data center market opportunities. His focus remains on fundamental technology investments. Tom’s current interests include cloud computing, semantic databases, and virtualization and their impact on data center technologies.
Tom has served on over 20 private company boards. He was the lead partner on five major Celtic House exits: PixStream (acquired by Cisco Systems), Cambrian Systems (acquired by Nortel Networks), Skystone Systems (acquired by Cisco Systems), Northchurch Communications (acquired by Newbridge Networks), and Extreme Packet Devices (acquired by PMC-Sierra). Tom currently serves as a board member of three Celtic House companies.
Education
Ph.D., Fiber Optics, 1991
University of Toronto, Institute for Aerospace Science and Engineering
Postdoctoral Researcher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | 
