Grady S. Vanderhoofven 

Mr. Vanderhoofven is the Executive Vice President and a member of the Board of Directors of Eclipse Management, LLC, the General Partner of Meritus Ventures, L.P. He is one of two Fund Managers for Meritus Ventures, which makes equity investments in rural central and southern Appalachia. (www.meritusventures.com)

Mr. Vanderhoofven is also the Executive Vice President and a member of the Board of Directors of Southern Appalachian Management Company, LLC, the General Partner of the Southern Appalachian Fund, L.P.  He is the Assistant Manager of the Southern Appalachian Fund, which makes equity investments in low income areas in southern Appalachia. (www.southappfund.com)

Mr. Vanderhoofven currently is a member of the Boards of Directors for Gridsmart and Zipit Wireless, and he is a former member of the Boards of Directors of Tricycle, Arkansas Automatic Sprinklers, Protein Discovery, Eonstreams, ThinOptX, Metatomix, Walden Technology Source, Tarallax Wireless, and NuMarkets. Mr. Vanderhoofven is also a Board observer for Smart Furniture.

Currently, He is President and CEO of Three Roots Capital, a CDFI located in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Mr. Vanderhoofven previously worked for ten years at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). While at ORNL, he worked as a materials engineer and in business development. As a commercialization manager, he led the group responsible for identification and commercialization of intellectual property developed in an R&D organization with an annual budget exceeding $300 million. While at ORNL, he negotiated more than 50 license agreements and more than 125 commercial research and development agreements with national and international companies ranging from new company start-ups to Fortune 500 corporations. Mr. Vanderhoofven led ORNL in the creation of twelve start-up companies founded to commercialize products/services based on technology developed at ORNL.

Mr. Vanderhoofven is a member of the Tennessee Capital Formation Board and was previously a member of the Board of Directors of the East Tennessee Technology Council.  He won the American Museum of Science and Energy Tribute to Tennessee Technology Award in 1998 and the Federal Laboratory Consortium Excellence in Technology Transfer Award in 2001 and again in 2004 for his role in creating and capitalizing start-up companies to commercialize technology developed at ORNL.  He was an invited co-author of an article entitled A Vision for the Future of Rural Developmental Venture Capital for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in December 2006.  In September 2012, he accepted an invitation to serve on the Yale University School of Engineering & Applied Science Leadership Council.  

Mr. Vanderhoofven has both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Yale University, and he has completed an Executive Education Program in private equity and corporate governance at Harvard Business School.