Bob Starzynski

Director, Innovation Adoption GrantFund

Bob Starzynski serves as Director of the Technology Adoption Grant Fund for Innovation Works, managing a program that helps established manufacturers with research and development needs. In this capacity, Bob is responsible for raising outside funding for the program, consulting with manufacturing companies on product development and manufacturing process development initiatives, and managing the award and disbursement of grant money to companies. Bob has been with Innovation Works since 2001, having served as Director of Entrepreneurship Development, Director of External Business Services and as an Investment Associate prior to assuming his current role.

Bob brings more than 15 years of business experience to the team at Innovation Works. Before joining Innovation Works, Bob worked with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he helped launch and manage a weekly technology business section for the newspaper.
Prior to that, Bob spent nearly 10 years in the publishing industry in Washington, D.C., where he worked as a reporter, columnist and editor for several newspapers and magazines. The capstone of that work was the creation and oversight of TECHcapital magazine, a technology finance magazine owned by the Washington Post Company. As Editor-in-Chief of TECHcapital, Bob oversaw most aspects of the business, from the management of editorial content to the growth and development of operations and strategic alliances. In less than three years, Bob helped build TECHcapital into the largest magazine of its kind on the East Coast – with 200,000 readers and a staff of 25 professionals.

Before TECHcapital, Bob worked as a reporter and technology finance columnist for Washington Technology magazine and the Washington Business Journal. Bob’s interest in technology finance initially sparked when he was the Securities and Exchange Commission Bureau Chief for American City Business Journals, where he managed securities information and dissemination for more than 40 business journals around the country.

Bob serves on the Board of Directors of StartingGate, a small-business incubator located just outside of Pittsburgh, as well as on the Board of Directors for five different Keystone Innovation Zones (regional economic development groups) in Southwest Pennsylvania. Bob also served on the Board of Directors of the Pittsburgh chapter of the MIT Enterprise Forum from 2002 through 2006, and was the Co-Chairman of the Three Rivers Venture Fair Selection Committee from 2001 through 2007. Additionally, Bob is a 2007 graduate of Leadership Pittsburgh. Outside of work, Bob provides career mentoring to inner-city high school students as part of CLAAY (Career Literacy for African American Youth).

Bob has a degree in political science and economics from North Carolina State University.