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, led a student government of fifteen thousand, and served as a U.S. Marine. Today, a founder and CEO.
Victor Kiani was born in Bollnäs, Sweden, to immigrant parents, and grew up in Malmö, where he took his first job at fifteen: executive assistant to the principal of a private school. 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 pattern began early. His first job in New York found him: a director at HeartShare St. Vincent’s Services recommended him to the organization’s chief executive, who hired him to help train its frontline staff. At nineteen he wrote to the White House challenging the cost-effectiveness of a border wall, and the White House wrote back. New York City appointed him to its child-welfare agency’s advisory council. The United Nations invited him to its New York headquarters for the launches of the Armed Conflict Survey and the Antislavery Legislation Database. And when a front-running mayoral campaign wanted CUNY’s students, it came to him.
With access came responsibility. 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 lead a government of fifteen thousand students, sit on the committee that allocated its $2.9 million technology budget in the first full year after the shutdown, and donate his entire salary to the campus food pantry. Then he set it down to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he led Marines as a Corporal, certified as an Antiterrorism Officer, qualified as an Information Management Officer, and took on, without being asked, the work that kept his unit running.
Today Victor Kiani is the founder and CEO of NONUM. He studied 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. Professors at CUNY and NYU use his materials to teach the next generation. His own training has not stopped either, with certifications in artificial intelligence and cloud technology spanning IBM, Google Cloud, and AWS: the systems his strategies run through are systems he can read himself.