pittsburgh
(25)
Paul Uhlman and the long way to the other side of the table
After 36 years at Federated Hermes, Paul Uhlman moved from leading global distribution to overseeing its investment teams. His career began with client calls, and the questions have kept getting bigger.
Jimmy Brock and the summer job that lasted 47 years
A tennis lesson led Jimmy Brock to a coal mine in 1979. His route to the chairmanship and CEO role at Core Natural Resources runs through mine shifts, a merger and the business of preparing someone else to lead.
Scott Pipitone Keeps Making Room
A Pittsburgh designer started with a loan for a computer and printer. Three decades later, Scott Pipitone is still rearranging the space around other people’s ideas.
Michael J. Brunner and the business of saying hello
Before a new employee got far at Brunner, there was a meeting with Michael. The Pittsburgh agency founder built a career around a deceptively demanding idea: people should know one another, know the numbers, and share in the work.
William Demchak and the value of staying put
He left Wall Street for Pittsburgh. Then he set about taking PNC across America, one carefully chosen deal and one local relationship at a time.
Michael Mathias and the value of coming back
He joined American Eagle in 1998, left, returned, and spent six years as CFO. Now Michael Mathias is helping hand over the numbers - and the knowledge behind them.
John Oyler’s Eight-Hour Business School
Before he led BeOne Medicines, John Oyler sold rugs and refrigerators to students. A truckload of carpets helps explain the way he builds companies.
John Engel and the advantage of the unglamorous
A $4.5 billion deal put John Engel’s operating instincts to the test. The Wesco chief’s next wager runs through the cables, power systems and people behind the digital economy.
Debra Cafaro and the art of knowing when to bet
A Pittsburgh mail carrier’s daughter became a lawyer, took a chance on a troubled company, and stayed to build Ventas. Her story runs through silver dollars, difficult negotiations, and the people who make a second act possible.
Tim Knavish and the value of a long apprenticeship
He joined PPG as an engineer in 1987. After learning the company one assignment at a time, Tim Knavish now faces a different problem: deciding what it should become.
Rich Guerrini and the value of a second conversation
From telephone advice to digital brokerage accounts, Rich Guerrini has spent his PNC career connecting investors with people who can help. His next chapter brings banking and investing closer together.
Keith Schaefer and the business of what comes next
From an Atari awards stage to the electricity grid, Keith Schaefer has worked where technology meets a customer. His next connections run through investment banking and the university he never quite left.
William J. Golden’s bee-and-pollen theory
Before founding Noveome, William J. Golden helped build a venture fund to draw investment toward Pittsburgh. His career connects the money, institutions and people that give a company somewhere to begin.
Ven Raju and the case for the underdog
At 18, Ven Raju wanted to be a lawyer. At Innovation Works, he has found another way to argue for the underdog: help Pittsburgh’s entrepreneurs get the capital, customers, and practical support to build a business.
Mark Peterson and the money that stayed in the neighborhood
In 1990, Mark Peterson founded the community loan fund that became Bridgeway Capital. Over 29 years, his work carried him from financing neighborhood businesses to reopening a Homewood factory - and eventually to helping other leaders take their turn.
Emily Cosnotti Makes Taste Operational
From photo prints and subscription boxes to an owl loose in Roblox, Emily Cosnotti has built a career out of giving ambitious ideas a workable shape. Her other laboratory is a 1929 Pittsburgh house, where taste must survive budgets, tools and the occasional uncooperative ceiling.
Stacy Leidwinger Makes Complicated Technology Travel in Plain English
Before she sold cybersecurity, Stacy Leidwinger studied the machinery beneath it. Nine companies, four acquisitions and one enduring idea later, HackerOne's CMO is making the case that clarity is not decoration - it is how technical work travels.
Eric Clements Made a Career Out of Marketing the Rules
He started in sales, learned the grammar of compliance software, and spent more than a decade turning dense rules into an enterprise story people could act on.
Brandon Contino Taught a Robot to Pick the Produce Aisle
He started with neural prosthetics, followed a water problem into agriculture, and discovered that the hardest part of a tomato is persuading a machine to pick it quickly, gently and all day long.
Jennifer Reel Built a Career by Making a Growing Bank Make Sense
She joined FNB as a temp when it had fewer than 30 branches. Twenty-five years later, Jennifer Reel is shaping how a much larger bank speaks to employees, customers and the cities it serves.
Joseph Mendel
Joseph Mendel has spent a career translating strategy into motion - across banks, consultancies, healthcare operations and, on summer weekends, the tight city-street course of Pittsburgh's vintage grand prix.
Laura E. Benjamin
Laura E. Benjamin is the CEO and President of Myris Therapeutics, a Pittsburgh-based biotech building ultra-high DAR antibody-drug conjugates that fuse polymer chemistry with cancer biologics. A molecular biologist by training, she has moved from Harvard pathology labs to Eli Lilly oncology leadership to two CEO chairs - most recently steering OncXerna through more than $100 million in clinical-stage financing before taking the helm at Myris in 2024.
Graham Rihn
Graham Rihn is the founder and CEO of RoadRunner, a Pittsburgh-based company that uses data and AI to modernize commercial waste and recycling. A Cornell economics grad and former college linebacker who grew up in Allison Park, Pennsylvania, Rihn started RoadRunner in New York City in 2014 after watching garbage pile up on Manhattan streets and asking why an $85 billion industry had skipped the technology revolution. He moved the company to his hometown of Pittsburgh in 2017 and grew it from roughly 30 people in three cities to more than 500 employees serving over 12,000 customers nationwide, raising more than $150 million along the way, including a $70 million Series D led by General Atlantic.
Rexhep Dollaku
Rexhep 'Rexhi' Dollaku is a General Partner at Base10 Partners, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm that has become the first Black-led VC to cross $1 billion in assets under management. Born in Ulcinj on the Montenegro-Albania border and raised in Pittsburgh, Dollaku studied economics, global health, and health policy at Harvard before building his career in venture. He joined Base10 as an early team member, architecting the firm's thematic research methodology that now drives 90% of its investments and growing it from a seed-stage firm to a $1.3B AUM powerhouse. His focus: backing founders who automate the 'real economy' - food, logistics, retail, fintech - solving problems for the 99% while donating half of the firm's profits to HBCU scholarships.
Nick Mehta
Nick Mehta co-founded Gainsight in 2013 and spent 13 years as CEO building the defining customer success platform - growing it from a startup into a $1.1 billion unicorn acquired by Vista Equity Partners, and in the process creating an entirely new job category of Customer Success Manager now held by hundreds of thousands of professionals worldwide. A Harvard-educated biochemist turned serial entrepreneur with a penchant for Taylor Swift parody rap videos, he stepped down as CEO in August 2025 to make way for his hand-picked successor while continuing on the board.