From Malmö to New York, and beyond.
He has never waited for permission. Victor Kiani came to New York at sixteen, on his own, and within a few years had advised a city agency, served as Executive Vice President of a student government representing fifteen thousand students, and become a U.S. Marine.
Victor Kiani was born in Bollnäs, Sweden, to immigrant parents, and grew up in Malmö. He has been working since he was fifteen. At sixteen he came to New York on his own, with no network, no name, and no institution behind him. He finished high school, put himself through college, and set about proving a conviction he has held ever since: where you start should decide nothing about what you’re allowed to build.
The work along the way
Public service to building ventures
His first job in New York was at HeartShare St. Vincent’s Services. A director recommended him to the organization’s chief executive, who hired him to help train its frontline staff. In panel sessions, he worked through the practical questions staff faced while supporting young people and families. In 2019, he was also invited to join the New York City Administration for Children’s Services advisory council, where he and a fellow advocate brought the concerns of young people in foster care into discussions about their services.
At Queensborough he won the most contested race in the student government, the seat known to carry the Executive Vice Presidency, and went on to help represent fifteen thousand students through the pandemic. He held a student seat on the committee responsible for the college’s $2.9 million technology funding plan and donated his entire student-government salary to the campus food pantry. He advised the University Student Senate’s Chair of Fiscal Affairs and Vice-Chair of Graduate Affairs on credit/no-credit policy; the Senate represents all 25 CUNY campuses. At Queensborough, where he had a vote, he voted to adopt the policy. When Andrew Yang’s campaign proposed a forum with CUNY student leaders, he brought the invitation to the executive board to prepare representatives and questions; the forum was cancelled before it took place.
In April 2021, he told the student government he would be enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps. He went on to lead Marines as a Corporal, certify as an Antiterrorism Officer, and qualify as an Information Management Officer. He also took on work without being asked, including a fire-support teaching reference that brought scattered doctrine into one practical guide for his unit.
Victor Kiani is building KIANI Group. He is studying at New York University, chosen deliberately: a university is one of the few places where sitting next to people whose lives look nothing like yours is the point rather than a side effect. He expects to graduate in May 2027, and made the Dean’s List in Fall 2025 and Spring 2026. His own training has not stopped either, with certificates from IBM (Artificial Intelligence Fundamentals with Capstone Project) and Skillsoft (Google Cloud Digital Leader: Digital Transformation with the Cloud, and AWS Certified Machine Learning: Data Engineering, Machine Learning, & AWS).