Kimberly Gramm, MBA, PhD

Kimberly Gramm is a dynamic innovation executive who joined Tulane University in July 2022 to lead the Innovation Institute as the inaugural Chief Innovation & Entrepreneurship Officer. Kimberly’s primary focus is to build Tulane University’s innovation and entrepreneurial pipeline and increase regional capacity for new venture creation. This will improve lives throughout the world as well as create transformative economic growth and sustainability for New Orleans and the region. She is an experienced and published researcher on entrepreneur ecosystems with proven success in implementing strategic community and industry collaborations, startup creation, university-wide collaboration and programmatic activities for innovation-based entrepreneurship (I&E) enabling technology commercialization to create opportunity resulting in impact.

Kimberly has over 16+ years of early-stage technology venture development experience. More than 325 startups have been created in university environments under her management, those startups have raised more than $470M in investment capital. She has been awarded more than $12M in federal and economic development grants for research and commercialization funding in support of innovators and entrepreneurs. Recently, she is a part of a team awarded $160M for a National Science Foundation engine grant called FUEL to support energy transformation. Kimberly also founded two university accelerators, FAU Tech Runway and Texas Tech University Accelerator. She is the co-founder of an innovation district 501c3, Texas Tech Research Park, Inc.  

She is a champion for venture investment and is the founder of two university led venture funds, Seraph Fuel Fund and Tulane Ventures. She is currently the Managing Director of Tulane Ventures, a $10M investment fund in biotech& life science, energy, and AI & machine learning. Her extensive experience in commercializing research from university intellectual property, expanding talent and workforce and securing resources to develop the infrastructure needed to cultivate innovation.  

Kimberly earned a bachelor’s degree from University of South Florida, an MBA from UT and has a PhD from Texas Tech University. She is a community builder and a compassionate leader with a proven track record in the development of best-in-class entrepreneurship technology hubs and nurturing entrepreneurs and teams to succeed in challenging environments. She currently is serving as a member of the Governing Board for NSF FUEL and co-Chair of the Translation of Innovation to Practice/Technology Commercialization committee. Under her leadership the Tulane University Innovation Institute received the 2024 Outstanding Emerging Entrepreneurship Center Award at the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers (GCEC) in late 2024, this award recognizes university-based entrepreneurship centers established within the last five years that demonstrate early success based on a clear set of innovation metrics, impact, and community engagement excellence. 

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