November 24, 2015
 Tom G. Evans |
Northwestern Oklahoma State University’s graduating students and their families will have the privilege to hear guest speaker Tom G. Evans, a 1983 graduate, during the Fall Commencement Exercise set for Sunday, Dec. 6, at 3:30 p.m. in Percefull Fieldhouse.
Evans went to Cherokee High school and attended Northwestern immediately after high school.
He later graduated from Northwestern with a Bachelor of Science in business administration with a math minor.
In 2009 he received his M.B.A. from Marylhurst University.
“I knew I wanted to graduate and absolutely no question I wanted a degree,” Evans said. “I knew even as a kid working in a grocery store--running around on the farm--that I was going to be self-employed.”
He is the owner of Encompass Financial Services, Inc., a company he created in 1985 that provides business valuation, transaction services and brokerage, and is the registered investment adviser to Private Partners Opportunity Fund, LLC, an angel fund that makes entrepreneurial equity investments.
“About three years ago, I realized that our area didn’t have a fund to make a private equity investment,” Evans said about northwest Oklahoma. “Let’s say you have a great idea and it wasn’t something tangible, it wasn’t something you could walk into the bank and get collateral on, but more conceptual. An idea or whatever it was, but there wasn’t a method out here to find investment into that, so I created the Private Partner’s Opportunity Fund.”
He also is a director of GuideStone Funds--the nation’s largest screened mutual fund family--as well as past chair of the Northwestern Foundation, past chairman of the Baptist Foundation of Oklahoma, vice chair of Pioneer Spirit Foundation and board member of Leadership Oklahoma.
Evans is married to Dr. Cheryl Evans who is currently the president of Northern Oklahoma College. They have two daughters, Cara (Evans) Carson and Christa (Evans) Rogers.
-NW-