About Ed

Ed Scott is an experienced and successful business executive, a former Assistant Secretary in the U.S. Government, and an active supporter of a number of philanthropic initiatives.

Career

In early 1995, Mr. Scott founded BEA Systems, Inc. with the other two principals of the company, Bill Coleman and Alfred Chuang. Mr. Scott served both as President of BEA and as Executive Vice President for World Wide Field Operations, supervising BEA’s sales, marketing, and services operations. BEA became the 12th largest software company in the world and was acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2008.

Prior to BEA, Mr. Scott spent seven years at Pyramid Technology, where he managed worldwide sales and marketing. Before Pyramid, Mr. Scott was part of the team that started the Federal division of Sun Microsystems where he spent three years. In 1978, Mr. Scott founded Office Power, Inc., an office automation firm that was purchased within the first year by Computer Consoles, Inc. of Rochester, NY.

Before his career in the high-technology industry, Mr. Scott was an executive in the U.S. government for 17 years. Mr. Scott served seven Attorneys General (Republicans and Democrats) and three Secretaries of Transportation. In his last government assignment, he served as an Assistant Secretary in the U.S. Department of Transportation during the Administration of President Jimmy Carter. During his time in government, Mr. Scott received the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive and the William A. Jump Memorial Foundation Meritorious Award for Exemplary Achievement in Public Administration.

Mr. Scott earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in political science from Michigan State University. He also has a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from the University of Oxford. In May 2011, Mr. Scott was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the Florida Institute of Technology. In May 2012, Michigan State University presented Mr. Scott its Outstanding Alumni Award. In May 2016, BNP Paribas awarded him its Grand Prize for Individual Philanthropy in Paris, France.

Philanthropy

Since withdrawing from direct management at BEA, Mr. Scott initiated a variety of philanthropic initiatives, including the funding and support of several orphanages and child development centers in Central America.

In 2001, Mr. Scott founded and provided funding for the Center for Global Development (CGD)
in Washington, D.C., the world’s leading policy research institution on global poverty and development issues. In May 2014, Mr. Scott stepped down as Chairman to become Chairman Emeritus. Lawrence Summers succeeded him as Chairman.

Mr. Scott is also the founder and Chairman Emeritus of Friends of the Global
Fight which, with the assistance of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
provides support in the U.S. for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis
and Malaria. Friends of the Global Fight has been replicated around the world;
there are now eight Friends organizations globally.

Along with Bill Gates and George Soros, Mr. Scott is a co-founder of DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa), an advocacy organization dedicated to building public and political awareness about development problems in Africa, most notably the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The lead singer of the rock band U2, Bono, is the principal spokesperson of DATA (now called ONE) and he has used it as the principal platform for his visible and effective advocacy on global development and health policies.

Mr. Scott established and funded the Scott Family Fellows program in 2007. The program provides to the President of Liberia a cadre of highly trained economists and development specialists, who work directly for the cabinet secretaries of various Liberian ministries helping to reconstruct that war-torn country.  Since its inception, the program has been expanded to include other fellows funded by Humanity United, the McCall MacBain Foundation, the Open Society Institute and the Nike Foundation. There are currently 15 fellows in Monrovia working across numerous Ministries and government agencies.

Ed Scott founded the Center for Interfaith Action on Global Poverty (CIFA) in 2008 to improve the capacity and effectiveness of the faith community in its collective effort to reduce global poverty and disease. CIFA launched the Nigerian Inter-Faith Action Association (NIFAA), which has had a tremendous impact mobilizing churches and mosques to help reduce malaria and other diseases. CIFA is now part of Religions for Peace (RfP).

As a loyal alumnus of Oxford, Mr. Scott endowed a Chair in Psychiatry and two research fellowships dedicated to the study of the causes and possible treatments of autism and Asperger’s syndrome at Oxford. He established a special program at University College, Oxford for admission to the college of students with severe disabilities.

Mr. Scott serves on the Board of Trustees of the Florida Institute of Technology where he also funded the creation of the ScottCenter for Autism Treatment. The Scott Center provides world-class assessment and treatment services for children diagnosed with autism while conducting innovative research.

In addition, Mr. Scott serves on the Board of Directors of the United States Global Leadership Coalition (USGLC). He previously served on the Boards of Directors of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (IIE) and the King Center for the Performing Arts. He previously served on the Boards of Advisors of the Global Health Policy Center of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and Whole Child International.

Mr. Scott has provided substantial financial and advisory support to Compassion International, a faith-based children’s development group that aids over 1,700,000 children in 26 countries.

Commercial Interests

Ed Scott is the Executive Chairman of Tyton BioEnergy Systems. Tyton has developed a unique variant of tobacco and process to be used to produce biofuels and renewable products. Mr. Scott is also the owner of Tyton NC Biofuels, an ethanol production facility in North Carolina. He is an investor and member of the Board of Directors for Voxiva, a company that is a global pioneer in delivering interactive mobile health services, combining multiple technologies including SMS text messaging and apps to support prevention, disease management, and wellness.

Mr. Scott was one of the earliest and largest single investors in StubHub, Inc., a highly-successful online ticketing company.  He served on its Board for seven years prior to its acquisition by eBay in 2007. Mr. Scott served for 13 years as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Florida Beer Company, where he was the majority shareholder prior to its acquisition by ANSA McAL in July 2016.

Mr. Scott serves as a senior director of GameTomo. The company, GameTomo, is identifying successful new games and then arranging for their “localization” for the Japanese market.

In addition, Mr. Scott founded, built, owns, and operates the Kiwi Tennis Club, which is one of the premier tennis facilities in the United States, in Indian Harbour Beach, Florida. Two players who have competed in tournaments at the Kiwi Club won gold medals at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.