Edward Kim

Edward Kim is passionate about early-stage technology ventures and empowering entrepreneurs with the tools and the network to succeed. Over 20 years, Kim held numerous management, board advisor and founder roles in angel and institutional investor backed tech startups, as well as management and technology assignments in North America, Europe and Asia with Fortune 100 companies.

As a tech entrepreneur, Kim co-founded, raised capital and led two technology start-ups commercializing innovative assembly & automation solutions, and industrial machine intelligence technology. He has successfully led new market development in the U.S., S. Korea, China, Russia, Italy and India, acquiring such customers as Samsung, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Ford and Tata to name a few.

Kim held various finance management positions at Ford and Visteon, responsible for capital planning, performance management and financial turnarounds. As a global director of engineering at a FIAT industrial company, he led the development of several new product and automation innovations for next-generation vehicle programs.

Currently, Kim is a partner at K5 Velocity Ventures, a strategy advisory and investment firm dedicated to supporting early-stage scalable impact ventures in digital Healthcare, Smart Data analytics, enterprise software and physical innovation. K5 Velocity's clients includes an enterprise software venture that was recently voted Top 20 Promising Edutech by CIO magazine, a digital healthcare startup focused on delivering a brain disorder assessment technology through Cloud-platform, and a medical device venture that was recently been acquired.

He is also a mentor-in-residence at the WSU Technology Commercialization Office. He is an advisor to Nanowire Gas Sensor technology commercialization initiative, helping to secure grants from NSF I-Corps program, DoD STTR and MTRAC (Michigan Translational Research & Commercialization). He also serves as an industry advisor for University of Pittsburgh Coulter Translation Research Program.

In 2012, Kim received the Automation Alley Advanced Manufacturing Technology Innovation award and a New Business Idea award from Great Lakes Entrepreneurial Quest (GLEQ).

He attended Michigan State University, where he obtained a BA in financial administration and the University of Notre Dame, where he received an MBA.