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Marc Kramer is an American serial entrepreneur, business book author and journalist. He founded the country’s first formerly organized investor angel network, the Pennsylvania Private Investors Group, now called the Private Investors Forum, and the country’s first cyber bank insurance product for small businesses, Commercial Deposit Insurance. Marc is also founder of Dads & Daughters, a group that made sure that entrepreneurial fathers and their daughters got together every Saturday for uninterrupted time.
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Biography
Marc Kramer was born in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, to Robert Kramer, a small business owner, and Shelly Kramer, a fine China sales representative for Macy’s Department Store. Kramer graduated from Coatesville High School in 1978. He attended and graduated from West Virginia University Perley Isaac Reed School of Journalism in 1982 and obtained a Master’s in Management in 1991 from The Pennsylvania State University.
Career
Kramer started his career as sports writer for the Village News and the Coatesville Record. He left sports writing in 1983 and joined Berkheimer Associates to become a tax administrator. While working for Berkheimer Associates, Kramer started a part-time marketing business called Kramer Marketing. His firm client, the Downingtown Marketplace, hired Kramer to be assistant manager in 1984.
During his time at the Downingtown Marketplace, Kramer started the Downingtown Antique Hub, a small business center and a mirrored closet store business. Kramer left the Downingtown Marketing place in 1987 to become the first executive director of the Penn State Technology Development Center in Great Valley, Pa, which he grew from one company to 53 and lead the nation in minority startup companies.
In 1990, Kramer left the Penn State Technology to start the Eastern Technology Council, which was the second largest technology council in the United States. During his time with ETC, he started the Pennsylvania Private Investors Group and a national newspaper, Technology Times.
Kramer started Kramer Communications, a marketing and new venture development consultancy in 1997. While running Kramer Communications, he started PA Artist Entrepreneur in 2003, co-founded in 2003 with his then wife, Jacqueline Kramer, Expert Speakers, marketing business professionals to trade associations and corporations and was sold to Speaker Match in 2005, Prompt Payment, which provided reverse factoring service, in 2007, and Commercial Deposit Insurance, which insures small business bank accounts against cyber theft of funds, in 2012.
Currently, Kramer is the executive director of the Angel Venture Fair , which brings together entrepreneurs and investors from around the world, and is Executive-in-Residence at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, Pa.
Personal
Marc Kramer was married to Jacqueline Kadoch, a Spanish interpreter for social service organizations, from 1984 to 2013. He has two daughters, Ariel Kramer, president of Klover Communications, and Sydney Kramer, author of Cookie Dalmatian Mysteries. Kramer also has two sisters, Dr. Randi Braman, a family doctor in Owings Mills, Maryland, and Leslie Kramer, vice president of Human Resources at First Bank of Perkosie.