Kramzler Is Named to Head High-Tech Program at UCSD

Bryna W. Kranzler has recently been named associate director of CONNECT, the 3 1/2-year-old technology and entrepreneurship program at UC San Diego. She replaces Barbara Bry, who has gone on to head a consulting project and to co-write a book.

In her new position, Kranzler, 31, will coordinate a variety of educational programs for high-technology and service firms. She has recently worked with Ernst and Young on initiating that firm’s annual biotechnology survey.

“We’re trying to increase the level of sophistication of local high-technology companies and the service companies who want to work with them,” Kranzler said. “I’m involved with planning a variety of programs, some educational, which will really bring a national spotlight to the high-tech community in San Diego.”

Kranzler moved to San Diego six months ago from Connecticut and has already discerned a difference in the local business climate from the East Coast.

“People here are so generous with their time and their expertise,” Kranzler said. “That’s what’s exciting about San Diego--you can really watch the infrastructure being developed, and for me in my position, I’m able to be a part of it,” she said. “It’s not like New York, that is so firmly established that networks are in place. Here, everyone is working toward improving the sophistication of this community.”

A graduate of Barnard College in New York and Yale School of Organization and Management in Connecticut, Kranzler brings to CONNECT several years of experience in marketing and communications in the health-care, high-technology and consumer-products industries. Most recently, she was director of marketing for a year and a half at Berni Co., a market research and package design business in Connecticut.

Kranzler also was a marketing consultant to a software company owned by Dun & Bradstreet Corp., and has had experience with IBM’s Academic Computing Information Services.

She moved to San Diego six months ago with her husband, Jay, when he was named president and CEO of Cytel, a La Jolla-based biotechnology company.