BlueStone Venture Partners, LLC

Tom Nickoloff

Co-Founder & Managing Director

Tom Nickoloff, Founder & Managing Director, is responsible for management and strategic planning activities for BlueStone. He is also the founding member of Camino Real Capital Partners (CRCP), a private investment firm based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Mr. Nickoloff has been instrumental in building BlueStone and CRCP into successful equity platforms by leveraging his extensive management and technology experience developed in the Oil and Gas industry.

Prior to forming CRCP, Mr. Nickoloff served in an executive management capacity for a number of Oil & Gas related entities, including: Estancia Oil and Gas, LLC, an upstream exploration and production company headquartered in Austin, Texas where Mr. Nickoloff has negotiated several large acquisition and divestiture transactions; and TRNCO Petroleum Corporation, a Geophysical Project Management company based in Midland, Texas where Mr. Nickoloff serves as President and Chief Geophysicist. Mr. Nickoloff has been credited in industry journals, and received awards for, the development, testing, and implementation of many new seismic data acquisition methodologies and processing techniques and is considered one of the early adopters and innovators in the 3D seismic industry.

Mr. Nickoloff is a proven technology innovator, successfully recognizing and developing emerging technologies, and has experience building and managing successful business ventures. Mr. Nickoloff earned a B.Sc. in Geophysical Engineering at The Colorado School of Mines.

Chris Burwell

Manager of Research

Chris Burwell is Bluestone Venture Partners’ Manager of Research.

He is responsible for executing diligence and research activities on potential investment opportunities. 

Chris holds a BS in Finance as well as a BS in Supply Chain Management both from the University of Illinois. Previously, he interned in various roles for a number of different companies including HAVI, Finance Ireland, and Advance Trading.

In his free time Chris enjoys outdoor activities such as fishing, golfing, and running.

Mara Aspinall

Co-Founder & Executive Consultant

Mara Aspinall is a healthcare industry leader and pioneer with a commitment to active civic involvement. Aspinall is Co-Founder and Managing Director of BlueStone Venture Partners.  Aspinall also heads the Health Catalysts Group publishing the popular Health Catalysts Diagnostics Year in Review. Aspinall is an advisor to The Rockefeller Foundation on COVID diagnostics.

Aspinall is passionate about education on diagnostics, genomics, and personalized medicine. To that end, Mara co-founded the School of Biomedical Diagnostics at Arizona State University, the first school dedicated to Diagnostics as an independent discipline.

Aspinall served as President and CEO of Ventana Medical Systems, now Roche Tissue Diagnostics, a $1 billion division of the Roche Group. Previously, she was President of Genzyme Genetics and Genzyme Pharmaceuticals.  Deeply committed to expanding learning, Aspinall was an active member of the US Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Council on Genetics, Health & Society (SACGHS) in the Obama and Bush administrations. Aspinall is also certified in Cybersecurity Oversight from Carnegie Mellon University.

Mara was named Arizona Biosciences Leader of the Year by the Arizona Bio Association and one of “100 Most Inspiring People in Life Sciences” by PharmaVOICE and one of Women Inc.’s Most Influential Corporate Board Directors. Ms. Aspinall holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Tufts University.  She is a member of the Board of Directors of several publicly traded companies including Abcam plc, Allscripts, Castle Biosciences, DA32, OraSure, and Blue Cross Blue Shield Arizona. She also is a Board Member for Pyx Health and is a Board Observer for GT Medical Technologies.