Maria Gibbs

Executive Director

Maria Gibbs serves as the Executive Director of iNDustry Labs.  In her role, she focuses on turning geographic proximity to Notre Dame into a strategic advantage for regional firms. She leads a team that forms long-term partnerships with private sector leaders to drive innovation, economic resilience, and real-world impact for both industry and the university.

Prior to joining iNDustry Labs, Maria spent eight years in venture capital and private equity, primarily focused on technology companies driving economic impact for people and businesses that call small cities home. Maria co-founded and served as Managing Partner at INVANTI, an early stage investment firm. She raised a pre-seed venture fund with an investment thesis focused on advancing economic vitality in small cities and built relationships with over 100 small business owners in the South Bend region to help make their problems legible to startup founders and connect them to pilot opportunities with tech-enabled startups. She also served as a value creation and operations consultant for several private equity firms in California, Illinois, Indiana, and Texas, where she built out investment decision-making frameworks and operational infrastructure and worked with mid-market companies to expand margin and grow revenue.

Maria earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Duke University and a Ph.D. in civil engineering from the University of Notre Dame, where her research focused on developing a novel sensing and system identification approach to wind mitigation in long span footbridges. She has also served as an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at IDEA Center at the University of Notre Dame and Director of Operations for Bridges to Prosperity, an international footbridge building organization.