BIANYS STAFF

Kim Grant, Biography 

Kim joined BIANYS in May 2025 as Deputy Director overseeing membership and program services. She launched her own consulting firm, KBG Business Development in January 2025 after having spent twenty years of her career helping entrepreneurs. Her clients include public, private, institutional and academic collaborations with a focus on innovation, entrepreneurism and economic development.

Previously, Kim was Vice President of Business Development at Western New York’s economic development agency, Invest Buffalo Niagara, where she led the team that attracted and retained businesses that generated over 1500 new jobs and a billion dollars in capital investment. Kim also worked as Business Development Executive at the University at Buffalo for the Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and the UB Jacobs School of Medicine as the Director of the Surgical Simulation Lab helping innovation minded clinicians navigate the Start UP process.

Kim is a Leadership Buffalo graduate from 2011, and received her Bachelor’s in Business Studies from Buffalo State.

MARC ALESSI BIOGRAPHY

Marc Alessi is the Executive Director Emeritus of the Business Incubator Association of New York State – www.bianys.com.  He is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor who is now the Director of Investment Program Management at the New York State Comptroller’s Office.

Marc founded SynchroPET (www.synchropet.com.), a biomedical device startup located at Stony Brook University’s Long Island High Technology Incubator that manufactures the world’s smallest P.E.T. Scanners (Positron Emission Tomography which improve the capabilities of existing MRI and PET Scanners.  Marc is a co-founder Metatraffic, a startup providing data analytics for VR digital twins in the metaverse (www.metatraffic.co).

He also served as the Executive Director of the Tesla Science Center in Shoreham, New York, at the site of famed inventor Nikola Tesla’s last standing lab, the Center’s mission is to launch a museum, science center, and business accelerator, focused on educating the public on Tesla’s inventions as well as inspire people about the importance of science and innovation in our lives.  www.teslasciencecenter.org

He is an attorney and lobbyist, and serves of counsel to Campolo, Middleton, and McCormick LLP in Ronkonkoma where he runs the Economic Development law practice assisting companies and the entrepreneurs that run them from start up to exit on corporate matters and public affairs.

Marc is a former New York State Legislator, and currently serves on the Boards of Peconic Bay Medical Center in Riverhead and the Northwell Health hospital system.  Marc was the former Executive Director of the Long Island Angel Investor Network, and had served on the board of the Long Island Power Authority, the largest public power utility in the United States.

Marc lives in Shoreham with his wife and three young children.  He is committed to growing opportunities in the Innovation and Entrepreneurial Ecosystem and empowering people to control their own destiny through entrepreneurship.

Marc has a BA from SUNY Albany and a JD from Touro Law School.