Mark Scifres

(B.S. GE ‘96)

Mark Scifres is the founder and chairman of Pavlov Media, a company that provides Internet services to apartment complexes and homes across the United States. He came up with the idea in 1989 and officially launched the company in 1994 while pursuing a bachelor’s degree in general engineering at the University of Illinois-Urbana. After graduating in 1996, Pavlov Media grew from his dorm room to a $60 million-plus corporation.

Under Scifres' leadership, Pavlov Media expanded to over 200 markets across 45 states with 350-plus employees. He secured funding from Macquarie Asset Funds for nationwide fiber-to-the-home solutions and retired as CEO in 2023.

Scifres is credited with inventing and patenting several solutions still in use today to provide high-speed Internet for apartment buildings. These include a method for fairly sharing and allocating bandwidth based on usage over time intervals, user registration via web redirection, and using networks for emergency alerts and rent collection messaging. The company’s apartment services team was the first to offer 100 Megabit, Gigabit, 10 Gigabit and 100 Gigabit speeds in the industry. In 2024, Pavlov Media plans to introduce the first Wi-Fi 7 10 Gigabit wireless services in the apartment industry.

Originally from Palo Alto, California, Scifres settled in Champaign, Illinois, where he married his wife, Whitney, and has two children. He is committed to fostering opportunities for students and regularly shares his expertise in engineering and entrepreneurship as a guest speaker at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Parkland College.