Kimberly Gramm is the Associate Vice President Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Texas Tech University. She is responsible for economic engagement which includes the development of a comprehensive strategy for three important areas: Office of Research Commercialization, Innovation Hub at Research Park, and the Small Business Development Center to ensure economic prosperity of Texas. The focus of creating an integrated approach to the innovation ecosystem at Texas Tech is to support strong industry relations, deepen the support for entrepreneurship education, increase sponsored research opportunities, provide regional business support and ensure the appropriate policies and operating processes are effectively supporting students, faculty and the citizens of the West Texas community supporting economic development. She is responsible for developing and coordinating an effective dynamic and nimble team focused on innovation, engagement, knowledge transfer, commercialization, entrepreneurship and economic development. Her primary focus is building an innovation and entrepreneurial pipeline. She believes a multi-disciplinary approach to academics, co-curricular programs, research projects and a world class LEED facility(s) is the foundation to build a knowledge-based economy. She works with leadership to strategically attract technology clients from around the world to collaborate with the university system in Texas. She has 11+ years of early stage technology venture development with over 266 startups created under her management in university environments. Her passion is to develop, implement, and find resources to support Innovation and Entrepreneurship programming for students, faculty, and entrepreneurs. She has been awarded $10.75M+ grant and industry sponsored program funding. Currently she manages Texas Tech's GLEAMM (renewable technologies) proof of concept and accelerator early stage seed funds. As a co-investigator, TTU was recently awarded a $3.4M National Science Foundation Southwest National Science Foundation Node I-Corps grant as well as an NSF I-Corps Site award of $257K focused on supporting Texas Tech commercialization from research. The grant de-risks technology deepening the success of the startup pipeline. In addition, Dec 2018, she was awarded the Department of Commerce Regional Innovation Strategies Seed Competition grant of $300K focused on creating a $3-10M Ag-Tech venture fund the first in West Texas. Director of the Texas Tech Accelerator she currently manages 6-10 startups per year who receive $25,000 seed grants. Prior to joining TTU, she was at Florida Atlantic University for eight years as Director of the Adams Center for Entrepreneurship & Assistant Dean of the College of Business developing strategies for entrepreneurship programs. In 2014, as Associate Vice President at Florida Atlantic University, she co-founded the University accelerator called FAU Tech Runway. She and her co-founder raised $4.5M initial investment from the university and state of Florida Governor's office. She has extensive expertise in angel and venture funding.