Karen Gryga

Karen Gryga serves as Managing Director, Investments at DreamIt Ventures. She is an experienced venture capitalist, investor and entrepreneur with over 20 years of investing and operating experience. In addition to Dreamit role, Karen also founded the Dreamit Athena program, which focuses on providing support to female founders. Before Dreamit, Karen cofounded FashInvest and Lipstick Wisdom. Prior to founding these two companies, Karen was a founder and partner at 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. Karen 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. Karen also serves on the board of the Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania. Karen began her career at TRW Inc., a multi-billion dollar conglomerate, in their Federal Systems Division as a software developer. Karen is a frequent speaker on the subject of venture capital and entrepreneurialism in both professional and academic communities. She holds a MBA in decision analysis from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and 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.