pennsylvania
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MSA makes the invisible hard to ignore
A miner’s lamp helped launch MSA. A century later, its next bet is that a warning should reach more than the person wearing it.
PPL Corporation and the outage that never happened
A utility sells something people notice mostly when it disappears. PPL is spending billions to make those moments rarer - while a new wave of data centers tests who should pay for the grid.
Hershey made chocolate ordinary. That was the big idea.
A five-cent bar helped turn a luxury into a habit. The business behind it now has to make the same trick work for pretzels, popcorn, and a much more expensive cocoa bean.
Fry Communications prints the magazine. Then comes the hard part.
Ink is only the beginning. Inside the family-owned Pennsylvania printer that treats the journey to your mailbox as part of the product.
Nexxt sold its name. Kept its future.
Before it helped employers find their next hire, Nexxt found an unusual way to keep its own team together: sell the name, keep the business. Today, its bet is that recruiting works better when you think like a marketer.
vybe urgent care Makes Room for the Everyday Emergency
Eighteen clinics. One Philadelphia-sized problem: getting ordinary medical care when ordinary schedules fall apart. vybe is building its business around the distance between needing help and actually getting it.
Bravo Group Found the Voters Who Stopped Picking Up the Phone
The Harrisburg firm began with a political operative's instinct: every hard business problem contains a campaign. Then the phone stopped working - and Bravo built its own way to listen.
The Agency That Found Its Next CEO Three Offices Down
Bill Donovan was preparing to sell the agency he had built over four decades. Then the pandemic broke the plan, his son asked a four-word question, and the family discovered that the most valuable campaign might be an operating system.
What Anderson Group Kept When It Sold the Company
A 37-year-old Pennsylvania agency reached the moment every founder eventually meets: protect the past, or equip the future. Its answer was to sell - carefully.
The Road Is Approved. Then the Doorbell Rings.
Arrow Land Solutions works in the peculiar interval between a line on a public plan and a family, storefront or utility easement in its path. The company’s job is to make that interval legible - and keep Pennsylvania’s infrastructure moving.
The Tiny Agency Behind the Footnotes
Kay Square Scientific turns clinical data into the papers, posters and expert conversations that medicine runs on. Its advantage is not size, but a small remote team with long memories, advanced degrees and an almost fussy respect for the footnote.
The Firm That Knows Which Door to Knock On
Bellevue Strategies built a business around a deceptively simple political skill: knowing who needs to hear a case, when they need to hear it, and what must happen next.
The Agency That Puts the Shopping Cart Inside the Big Idea
Ignite2X makes campaigns for the awkward distance between liking a brand and buying it. Its best work turns pens, cheese and charcuterie into measurable reasons to move.
The Old Name on the Can Just Went Independent
A 150-year-old paint name got its independence back in a $550 million deal. Now the company behind Glidden, Olympic and Liquid Nails has to prove a heritage brand can move fast.
Erie Insurance Group
Erie grew from a business plan scribbled on a dime-store tablet into a Fortune 500 insurer. Its enduring advantage is surprisingly analog: a narrow map, local agents and the belief that service is part of the policy.
Jefferson Health
Jefferson Health is a Philadelphia-based nonprofit academic health system that traces its roots to 1825. After absorbing Einstein Healthcare Network (2021) and Lehigh Valley Health Network (2024), it operates more than 30 hospitals and 700-plus care sites across eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey, paired with Thomas Jefferson University and a roughly 400,000-member health plan. It is now one of the largest nonprofit health systems in the United States, with about $15 billion in annual revenue and roughly 65,000 employees.