KDKA-TV TechnoVation 2018
KDKA-TV invites technology lovers alike to KDKA-TV TechnoVation, held on Friday, September 21st at the Renaissance Pittsburgh Hotel from 6pm-8pm (doors open at 5:30pm).
Don't miss Pittsburgh's most innovative networking event! Hear from key corporations, city leaders, innovators and organizations that are working together to lead the way into the future of technology.
From 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m., During KDKA-TV the TechnoVation Panel Discussion, you will hear from key corporations, city leaders and innovators that are working together to lead the charge into the future. The expert panel of local professionals will discuss the rise of technology in Pittsburgh as well as its importance in the growth of the city.
Panel Moderator
Jon Delano - Money & Politics Editor, KDKA-TV Columnist, Pittsburgh Business Times Adjunct Professor of Public Policy & Politics, Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College
Think of a well-recognized, award-winning analyst in Pennsylvania who combines years of "inside experience" on Capitol Hill with the perspective of the private sector and life outside the Washington Beltway, and one name leads the list: Jon Delano.
Jon Delano is a familiar face on KDKA-TV, having been the station's political analyst since 1994.
Jon's on-air work began in 1991 after fourteen years working in the US Congress. In 1994 he became the political analyst for KDKA-TV and reported from both the Republican and Democratic presidential conventions in 1996, 2000, and 2004. In 2008, he was the first TV reporter in the state to interview Barack Obama and had six interviews with him that year, along with John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Sarah Palin.
As one of Pennsylvania's respected commentators, Jon is recognized for his ability to analyze complex issues and make them understandable to any audience. Having worked in both government and the private business world, practiced law, reported on radio and television, written extensively, and taught at the graduate school level, Jon's combined experiences allow him to speak with some authority about governmental, political, and economic issues.
Jon moderates and facilitates seminars, candidate debates, and programs and speaks on governmental and political issues to many civic, business, and labor groups. His reputation as an even-handed, non-partisan political analyst has led to his selection as a moderator and panelist for many candidate debates, including statewide debates for governor and U.S. Senate and many local debates and forums for Mayor of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County Executive, Congress, and the PA General Assembly. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Haverford College and University of Pennsylvania Law School, Jon and his wife Jane and their two children live in Mt. Lebanon two blocks from where Jon grew up.
Opening Remarks by City of Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto and County Executive Rich Fitzgerald
Pittsburgh Mayor - William Peduto
William Peduto was elected to the office of Mayor of the City of Pittsburgh in the General Election on November 5, 2013, and took office as Pittsburgh's 60th Mayor in January of 2014. Prior to taking office, he worked for 19 years on Pittsburgh City Council - seven years as a staffer then twelve years as a Member of Council. As a Councilman, Bill Peduto wrote the most comprehensive package of government reform legislation in Pittsburgh's history. He strengthened the Ethics Code, created the city's first Campaign Finance Limits, established Lobbyist Disclosure and Lobbyist Registration and ended No-Bid Contracts. As Mayor, Peduto continues to champion the protection and enhancement of Pittsburgh's new reputation - maintaining fiscal responsibility, establishing community based development plans, embracing innovative solutions and becoming a leader in green initiatives.
The Peduto administration is committed to modernizing city government and implementing leading practices to provide taxpayers with an efficient, effective, transparent, and a more accountable government. Under Peduto's leadership, the City of Pittsburgh has experienced a complete transformation of the city's procurement process; the reorganization of the Department of Permits, Licenses & Inspections; a commitment to developing a long-term maintenance and investment plan for the city's assets; the creation of the ONEPGH Resilience Strategy, and technological upgrades including a GPS based Snow Plow Tracker website, 311 Response Center mobile app, an interactive street paving website and several digital tools built with public information in a new open data portal. Setting priorities around strengthening Pittsburgh's 90 communities, Peduto established the Bureau of Neighborhood Empowerment to promote the city's role in housing, small business, and education; led the development of the city's land bank; and championed the creation of a neighborhood-strengthening Rental Registration program.
Since taking office, Mayor Peduto has lead a collaborative effort to make Pittsburgh a leading 21st Century city. The Peduto administration haspartnered with the White House on numerous initiatives, resulting in direct access to federal support related to affordable housing, education, economic development, energy efficiency, immigration, manufacturing, community policing, workforce development, technology and transportation. Under Peduto's leadership the City of Pittsburgh has played an active role in National League of Cities, U.S. Conference of Mayors and the Pennsylvania Municipal League initiatives. Pittsburgh was recently selected to join the Rockefeller Foundation network's 100 Resilient Cities, which provides resources to improve city resilience in the face of climate change, globalization and urbanization trends. In 2015 Mayor Peduto signed a unique agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy to make the city a world leader in district energy production and Pittsburgh joined the UN's Compact of Mayors, a global coalition of climate leaders committed to local action and global impact. Recently Mayor Peduto joined with mayors across the world to reaffirm Pittsburgh's commitment to the Paris Agreement and efforts to combat climate change.Mayor Peduto is also a founding member of the MetroLab Network, a national alliance of cities and universities committed to providing analytically-based solutions to improve urban infrastructure, services and other public sector priorities.
The Peduto administration is working to ensure that everyone benefits from Pittsburgh's transformation and growth because, "If it's not for all, it's not for us."
Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald
County Executive Rich Fitzgerald took office on January 3, 2012, and he's currently in his second term. After more than 18 years in public service, including 12 on County Council, he still relishes his role working with others to make the county a great place to live and work, and he's bullish on the region's future.
Under Rich's leadership, the county has concentrated on economic development and job creation to great effect, and for the first time since the end of the Pittsburgh region's industrial era in the 1970s, the county is managing growth instead of decline. It boasts an excellent quality of life, low unemployment rate and cost of living, and a diverse and thriving business community.
Additionally, Rich is focused on improving public health, recreation, transportation, and on making county government more efficient. The Health Department, under a new director, has reorganized and implemented meaningful changes. The county's nine parks continue to be invested in and upgraded. County buildings, facilities, and vehicles are more sustainable. The Pittsburgh International Airport offers nearly double the number of nonstop flights it did just four years ago, and the Port Authority has been stabilized and has exciting new leadership. Six straight budgets have passed with no millage increases. The fund balance has significantly increased, and the county has produced considerable savings on bond issuances and seen its bond rating increase three times.
Rich says collaboration has been the "secret sauce" to solving the region's toughest problems, and that's why he focuses daily on meeting with constituents and on forming strong partnerships with elected officials at the federal, state, county and local levels, as well as with community leaders in business, labor, and philanthropy.
In addition to his numerous board appointments and memberships as the County Executive, Rich also serves as a member of the board of the County Executives of America, the Remake Learning Council, is Vice Chair of the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, and is part of the National Association of County Officials (NACo) Large Urban County Caucus.
Raised in Pittsburgh's Bloomfield-Garfield neighborhood, Rich graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with a business minor. He and his wife, Cathy, a pharmacist, live in Squirrel Hill. They have eight children.
Panel Participants
City of Pittsburgh: Laura Meixell, Asst. Director of Digital Services, Department of Innovation and Performance
Laura Meixell is the Assistant Director for Digital Services with the City of Pittsburgh's Department of Innovation and Performance. She manages the City's open data and analytics programs as well as the digital services studio, social media, and television production. At the beginning of the Peduto Administration, Laura co-founded the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center at the University of Pittsburgh and helps to lead our region's Open Data and Smart Cities strategies. Prior to joining the City of Pittsburgh, Laura worked with a technology non-profit in San Francisco called Code for America and as a Presidential Management Fellow at the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Obama Administration. Laura attended the University of Pittsburgh for both her undergraduate degree and Masters of Public Administration and lives in Bloomfield with her husband Casey.
CGI: Bernard Mongilio, Senior Vice President
Bernie Mongilio is Senior Vice-President, US Great Lakes Region, leading CGI's business in Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana. Bernie has over 35 years of diversified consulting and IT experience, 32 of which have been in a number of roles at CGI.
Bernie has called Pittsburgh home since 2008 after relocating with his family from Northern Virginia to lead the growth of CGI's presence in Western Pennsylvania. Under Bernie's leadership, CGI in Pittsburgh has grown to over 300 members serving a wide variety of clients in the region, helping them to drive transformation and advance their innovation agendas. This fall, CGI in Pittsburgh will be named as one of the company's first Innovation Centers for the US.
For the past 14 years, Bernie has served as the account executive for CGI's largest US banking customer. He also serves as the lead for CGI's US Banking practice, driving CGI's go to market strategy for banking across the company's US operations. Under Bernie's leadership, CGI teams support our banking clients' business transformation initiatives by delivering practical innovation on both the "run" and "grow" sides of the business. On the run side, CGI drives efficiency improvements by leveraging its proven expertise and industrialized processes across industries. On the "grow" side, CGI continues to bring new innovation in such areas as Customer experience and digital engagement, real-time payments, blockchain/distributed ledger technology, and open banking. He oversees CGI's participation in the Federal Reserve's Faster Payments task force and serves as CGI's representative to the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) General Assembly.
Bernie is actively involved in the business community of Pittsburgh, and has represented CGI with the Pittsburgh Technology Council for over 10 years. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management and Mathematical Sciences from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts. He currently lives in the North Hills of Pittsburgh with his wife Beth and their three children.
PNC/numo: Laura Ritz, Chief Operating Officer of numo
Laura Ritz is the COO of numo, a fintech incubator in Pittsburgh developed through PNC's Financial Services Group. Laura is the former SVP of Enterprise Innovation at PNC, where her team managed innovation and academic partnerships, experience design, and innovation programs for PNC. Prior to joining PNC, Laura was with Wells Fargo for nine years leading enterprise strategic programs and Northrop Grumman where she led business development proposals for satellite programs valued at over 100 million dollars.
In addition to her work at PNC, Laura is also active in the community. She is currently Chairman of the Board for March of Dimes Western PA and serves as the Co-Chair of the Corporate Circles Board at the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.
Laura holds a dual bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering and Biological Engineering from North Caroline State University and an MBA from Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.
Lanxess: Dr. Elie Saad, Vice President of Corporate Development
Dr. Elie Saad is the Head of Corporate Development (NAFTA) for Lanxess Corporation. He is responsible for integration of Chemtura acquisition, assessment of potential manufacturing sites for future IPG investment, assessing possible new sales opportunities and possibilities for the Lanxess product portfolio, and representing Lanxess vis a vis State and Federal politicians when needed.
Dr. Saad is fluent in English, German, Arabic, and French as he previously held positions with Lanxess as the Managing Director for Lanxess Middle East in Dubai, as well as the Global Business Line Head for Polymer Additives in Lanxess Deutschland.
Outside the office, Dr. Saad enjoys skiing, hiking, equestrian sports, and remaining updated on new scientific discoveries and developments in the physical sciences.
ServiceLink: Kiran Vattem, Chief Technology Officer
Kiran Vattem is the Executive Vice President, Chief Digital & Technology Officer for ServiceLink. In this role, he is responsible for the company's overall technology and product strategy/roadmap as well as all software architecture and development, including EXOS. Kiran joined the company in 2006.
Prior to his position as Executive Vice President, Chief Digital & Technology Officer, Kiran was the Senior Vice President of Architecture and Core Services at ServiceLink. Before joining ServiceLink, Kiran was the Technology Strategy Manager at FNF Corporate. He has held various leadership roles in product development at Oracle.
Kiran received his bachelor's in engineering from Osmania University in India and earned his master's degree in information systems from the University of Central Florida.
Argo AI: Peter Rander, President
Peter is a seasoned leader in the development of complex, autonomy-enabled systems, as well as the organizations that build those systems. Passionate to see robotics technology change the world, Peter has consistently pursued opportunities to help make that change happen, from working on a number of commercialization projects at the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University, to being part of the formative team that launched Uber's self-driving car efforts. His core robotics work spans computer vision, perception, path planning and control, and simulation-based robotic system development and testing. He has also led numerous human-centric robotic interface programs that leverage underlying autonomy technologies to aid human operators at multiple levels of interaction. Peter holds a master's degree (1993) and a Ph.D. (1998) in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, and a bachelor's degree (1991) in electrical engineering from University of Detroit-Mercy.
Robots and Pencils: Tracey Zimmerman, President
Tracey Zimmerman is the President of Robots & Pencils, a digital innovation firm focused on creating what's next. She and the robots, pencils and ampersands of R&P help some of the world's best brands use mobile and frontier technologies to transform and future-proof their businesses.
Tracey has over 20 years of experience in leadership, technology and marketing, and is a strong advocate for the user experience. When she isn't traveling and onsite with clients, you can find her at the Robots & Pencils' Pittsburgh office in the Strip District or at home with her family in Wexford.
Rosedale Technical College: Dennis Wilke, President and Director
An energetic teacher and experienced management executive, Dennis Wilke joined Rosedale Technical College in 2005 as Vice President and assumed the presidency when his father, Ben Wilke, stepped down the following year. He became a member of Rosedale's Board of Directors in 2002.
He is also Chairman of the Board for Precision Manufacturing Institute in Meadville, PA; a Trustee for the Northern PA Regional College, and President of the Pennsylvania Association of Private School Administrators (PAPSA), an organization of over 100 private career colleges.
Wilke was an executive for May Department Stores Company from 1991-2005, ending his career with the company as Vice President and Controller of its Foley's Department Stores in Houston, Texas, where he managed financial operations and reporting for the $2 billion, 70-store chain. As only the fifth president of Rosedale since the career school's founding in 1949, Wilke has grown the institution to approximately 700 students enrolled throughout the year, 70 employees and revenue of $8 million.
Wilke earned Bachelor of Science degrees in Economics and Philosophy from Carnegie Mellon University in 1991. While at CMU, he was Vice President of Kappa Sigma, a social fraternity.
As Rosedale's leader, Wilke has demonstrated his ability to utilize technology to enable them to work smarter and be more productive. For eight years in a row, the Pittsburgh Business Times has named Rosedale one of the Best Places to Work, ranking it No. 1 for large-sized businesses the past four years. In 2015, Smart Business Magazine named Wilke one of Pittsburgh's "Smart 50" business leaders and winner of its "Impact" category for employee engagement. Rosedale Tech was recently ranked #11 in the nation for 2-year career colleges by Forbes Magazine.
Wilke is President of the Pittsburgh chapter of Legatus, a national organization of Catholic business leaders; and Team Leader for the Accrediting Commission of Careers Schools and Colleges' Re-accreditation peer review visits.
An avid runner, Wilke achieved his goal and ran his first full Pittsburgh Marathon in 2016. Wilke and his wife Christine, live with their children Benjamin, Nicholas and Anna in South Fayette.
Philips: Vaishali Hegde , Head of Quality and Compliance.
Vaishali Hegde is the Head of Quality and Compliance at Philips Respironics. She manages a global team of 150 engineers who are responsible for ensuring the 30 product lines in the $1.3B Sleep and Respiratory Care Business are safe, reliable and compliant with regulatory standards worldwide. She has published and presented several papers at International Conferences on risk management and reliability. She is passionate about inspiring students to join STEM fields!
DQE - Patrick Lazorchak, Director of Network Engineering and IP Services
As Manager of Network Engineering and IP Services, Patrick is responsible for providing the technical leadership for all aspects of DQE Communications' Metro Ethernet services. Specifically, Patrick manages the network design, implementation, and maintenance of DQE's Ethernet networks. In addition, he is responsible for project management of all of the large networking projects.
Patrick oversees the development of the DQE Communications' web-based Customer Control Center as well as the internal network engineering team.
Prior to joining DQE Communications in 2013, Patrick held senior level network and system administrator positions at major academic and health care institutions, including Harvard Medical School, Medical University of South Carolina, and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Patrick earned a bachelor's degree in Political Science at the University of Connecticut.
Innovation Works: Terri Glueck, Director of Communications and Community Development and DQE Communications: Patrick Lazorchak, Director of Network Engineering and IP Services
As Director of Community Development & Communications, Terri Glueck leads Innovation Works' communications efforts. Having joined Innovation Works in its own startup phase, Terri has helped build Innovation Works' brand as one of the nation's most active seed-stage investors and a global model for technology-based economic development.
With more than 25 years of marketing and communications experience in both the private and non-profit sectors, Terri shares her experience with dozens of technology startups to help them develop their communications strategies and messages. She works with regional and national media to create awareness of Pittsburgh's economic transformation and demonstrate the value of innovation and startups to the economy. Terri's efforts have resulted in coverage in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Entrepreneur, Inc., the Economist, CBS and NBC nightly news and many other business, news and trade media outlets.
Prior to joining IW, Terri was the Director of Corporate Communications for a start-up life sciences company, TissueInformatics, Inc. Previously, she was Vice President of Strategic Marketing and Communications for the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, managed media relations and was the spokesperson for electric utility Duquesne Light Co., and was the Director of Communications for the Institute for Transfusion Medicine, the nation's third largest independent blood center. Terri also worked as a marketing communications consultant for early-stage technology companies and regional non-profit organizations, providing total marketing communications support when these companies and non-profits were too small to have in-house marketing capabilities.
Terri received her B.A. from Carnegie Mellon University. She has been a frequent guest speaker and panelist at local and national professional conferences regarding marketing and communications issues. Terri has also received numerous honors and awards for her work, including the 2013 Communicator of the Year award from the Pittsburgh chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators.
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