Bob Pickens
Savvy Advisory Board



Bob currently serves as the Director of Entrepreneurship for the Council for Entrepreneurial Development, the largest entrepreneurial support organization in the nation that identifies, enables and promotes high-growth, high-impact companies and accelerates the southeast region’s entrepreneurial culture. He has over 35 years of management experience ranging from early stage technology companies to Fortune 500 leaders. For over two decades, he has held the roles of CEO, COO, or CFO of emerging growth companies taking them from start-up to IPO, first venture funding to successful exit, and emerging growth stage to acquisition by a Fortune 500 company. Savvy Marketing Group clients where he served in the role of CFO include First Research which exited to D&B as well as Virtual Heroes which was recently sold to Applied Research Associates. He has international experience as North American CEO of a publicly traded German company and from starting and operating international divisions of multinational companies.

Mr. Pickens has orchestrated the raising of over $100 million through venture capital, debt financings, strategic partner investments, IPOs and sales of companies. Prior to his entrepreneurial career, he spent 17 years with Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation in positions of increasing responsibility in operations, sales and marketing. He has served on the board of directors of Washington Aluminum Company, Red Storm Entertainment (sold to Ubisoft), DataFlux (sold to SAS), Interactive Magic, and ViOS.

He is a graduate of Davidson College with a B.A. in psychology and has completed studies toward MBA and MS in Applied Behavioral Science at Johns Hopkins University.