Tom Kelly founded Iona Capital Advisors after a fifteen-year career with some of the leading global investment banks such as Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Robertson Stephens and Blackstone. Tom has extensive experience raising private capital for clients and has worked on over 100 transactions amounting to over $5 billion in transaction value. He is exclusively focused on advising and assisting companies in accessing the private capital markets. Prior to founding Iona, Tom was a Managing Director and Head of the Global Private Capital Advisory Group at Blackstone Advisory Partners where he was responsible for advising Blackstone's clients on raising capital in the private capital markets. Prior to joining Blackstone, he ran the private capital advisory group at Montgomery & Co. and ran the west coast private placement group for Bank of America. He began his investment banking career with Merrill Lynch in London and New York before transferring to San Francisco in 1999 to launch Merrill Lynch's Silicon Valley private placement practice. Tom has fifteen years of experience providing strategic advisory and capital-raising services to corporate clients. He has extensive experience in negotiating, structuring and executing transactions on behalf of companies in a variety of sectors including technology, media, healthcare, real estate and financial services. He has assisted both private and public companies in raising capital from venture capital firms, financial sponsors, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, mutual funds and strategic investors. He is also an active angel investor and secondary market participant. Tom obtained his MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was the recipient of a John F. Kennedy Scholarship and a Fellowship from the Royal Academy of Engineering. He previously obtained a First Class Honors Degree in Pharmacy from the University of Bradford, United Kingdom and worked as a research scientist with Pfizer and a production manager with Baxter Healthcare and Weleda prior to getting his MBA. Tom was born and raised in Ireland and remains very connected to the Irish entrepreneurial community. He participated in the Global Irish Economic Forum of October 2011 at the invitation of the Irish Government and was named to the Irish Technology Leadership Group's "Silicon Valley 50" in 2011 and 2012.