Karen Griffith Gryga is an experienced venture capitalist, investor and entrepreneur with over 20 years of startup and emerging growth company experience. Karen is Chief Investment Officer for DreamIt. Karen is also co-founder of Dreamit Health and founder of the DreamIt Athena program which focuses on female founders. DreamIt is a leading technology accelerator for entrepreneurs which has worked with and launched close to 300 companies since 2008 including SeatGeek, HouseParty, LevelUp, Biomeme, Biobots, Parsely, MindSnacks and Adaptly. 

Karen was Co-Founder and CEO of FashInvest, an initiative focused on emerging growth entrepreneurs within Branded Goods, Fashion, Fashion Tech and Retail. The goal of FashInvest is to create a business platform focused on bringing together entrepreneurs, investors and industry executives to foster the growth and development of emerging growth enterprises within Branded Goods, Fashion and Retail. FashInvest is a media, events and advisory entity. Karen was also Co-Founder of Lipstick Wisdom whose focus was on practical, actionable video-based day-to- day advice for moms with children with neurological challenges.

Prior to her entrepreneurial experience, Karen was a Founder and Partner of Liberty Venture Partners, a Philadelphia based venture fund established in 1997 with $150 million under management. Prior to Liberty, Karen was a Managing Director of Philadelphia Ventures Inc., a privately held venture capital management firm with a family of corporate and institutional limited partnerships exceeding $100 million of committed capital. Notable transactions included Synchronoss (Nasdaq: SNCR), InSoft, (acquired by ape), Liveprint.com (acquired by Kinkos), Cadis (acquired by Aspect Development) and WiseBear (acquired by Michael Milken).

Karen has also been Executive Director of MAG, The Mid-Atlantic Angel Group as well as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Context Capital Partners.

Ms. Gryga is well known throughout the entrepreneurial community and was previously on the board of the Greater Philadelphia Venture Group for seven years and was Chairman of the group for the 1999-2000 term. Ms. Gryga also serves on the board of the Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

Ms. Gryga began her career at TRW Inc., a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, in their Federal Systems Division as a software developer. Ms. Gryga is a frequent speaker on the subject of venture capital and entrepreneurialism in both professional and academic communities. Karen holds a MBA in decision analysis from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania (with Distinction). At the same time as Wharton, Karen obtained a Masters in Computer Science from the Moore School of Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Karen earned her Bachelor of Science degree in computer science (Phi Beta Kappa) from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.