USFRF Board Members
Tim Holcomb
Dr. Tim R. Holcomb
Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Embarc Collective
Dr. Tim R. Holcomb is CEO of Embarc Collective, a 501(c)(3) ranked as the top incubation program in North America by UBI Global. Embarc is a world-class entrepreneurship hub and central landing zone for Florida’s most driven and focused startup builders with 275+ founders that lead 130+ early-stage tech startups and growth companies. Over the past five years, member-companies have achieved a 96% survival rate, created 1,200+ high-paying tech and tech-enabled jobs, and secured almost $600M in angel, venture and growth equity, including more than half from investors outside the state of Florida. As the leading platform for tech startups and growth companies in Florida, Embarc Collective helps activate, promote, and accelerate Florida’s startup and innovation economy, hosting 300+ events that draw 10,000+ participants annually into entrepreneurship, technology, and innovation conversations.
Previously, Tim served as Executive Director of the John W. Altman Institute for Entrepreneurship and Founding Chair of the Department of Entrepreneurship in the Farmer School of Business at Miami University (OH), where he helped raised $47 million in private donations to support curricular and co-curricular programming in entrepreneurship. Prior to joining Miami, he held the Jim Moran Professor of Entrepreneurship at Florida State University and served as Executive Director of The Jim Moran Institute for Global Entrepreneurship, where he helped raised $100 million to establish the Jim Moran School of Entrepreneurship.
Tim has 35+ years of strategy, international business, and startup experience, including work in twenty-five countries abroad. He began his career at Accenture in 1986, where he consulted with Fortune 500 companies like PepsiCo, Nike, and American Airlines, among others, for thirteen years. In 1999, Tim cofounded and served as president and COO of Telcom Global Solutions (TGS) and two related operating companies, raising more than $20 million in combined funding. At Telcom, he built a $30 million technology business with more than 250 consultants serving operators such as AT&T, Telefonica, and Telia before exiting in a sale of the company to Flex, a Fortune 500 firm. Tim later served as senior vice president at Flex, where he helped establish and run the company's $800 million network service division with more than 6,500 employees worldwide.
The Tampa Bay Business Journal named Tim to its 25 People to Watch in Business in 2025. In 2017, he was named a finalist for the Greater Cincinnati Venture Association (GVCA) Mentor of the Year Award for Southwest Ohio and Northern Kentucky and was later named a finalist for the VentureOhio Catalyst of the Year Award for the state of Ohio in 2019. He is co-founder of 1809 Capital, a Miami University alumni-founded growth equity investment platform, and an angel investor with Queen City Angels, the longest-established organized angel group in the Midwest with more than 130 investments. Tim has advised hundreds of high growth companies that have raised more than $1.1 billion in early-stage seed, growth equity, and private equity funding during his career, including Tampa-based ReliaQuest, Portland-based SOLARCORE®, Covington-based Gravity Diagnostics, Charleston-based Gotcha, and Cincinnati-based Cerkl, among others.
Tim earned his Ph.D. in strategic management and entrepreneurship from the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University in 2007. He earned his bachelor's degree in Accounting and Computer Information Systems in 1984 and his MBA in Management in 1986 from the College of Business and Social Sciences at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.