Meet the 20 Pittsburgh leaders driving tech innovation in 2024
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Some people are really good at helping keep us informed, from the neighbors on our block to the colleagues in the breakroom.
For the tech and startup community, Technical.ly calls those people “connectors” — professionals who bring together locals, entrepreneurs and innovators.
Connectors play many roles, from helping newcomers find their first jobs to getting a startup founder in touch with local venture capital firms. We believe connectors help innovation happen in the markets that we cover, and our annual RealLIST Connectors feature celebrates that mission.
The list launched in Pittsburgh in 2022 with 100 influential tech leaders, followed by 20 more connectors in our 2023 group. Our third iteration of the docket features another 20 people folks in Pittsburgh should add to their networks if they want the inside scoop on what’s happening in the community.
Scroll down to meet the 2024 RealLIST Connectors in Pittsburgh, presented in alphabetical order.
Who else should we be watching to feature on future RealLISTs? We accept nominations for Startups, Connectors and Engineers all year long.
Khamil Bailey
Khamil Bailey
The Greenwood Plan, Cocoapreneur
As a cofounder and executive director of the Greenwood Plan, Bailey works with cofounder Samantha Black (whom we featured on the 2022 edition of this list) to support Black communities in Pittsburgh. They’re the force behind the recent transformation of the Pitt Building into a startup incubator, and projects like Emerald City, the building’s coworking space designed for Black entrepreneurs.
In Bailey’s other role, as founder and CEO of Cocoapreneur, she developed a directory of local Black-owned businesses. It aims to make entrepreneurship a more attainable goal for Black Pittsburgh residents.
Greg Coticchia
Greg Coticchia
1486 Labs, SE Healthcare, CEO Coaching International
Coticchia is one of the experienced leaders C-suite professionals in Pittsburgh look up to. He holds decades of experience at local software firms, and cofounded the local chapter of the entrepreneur accelerator program the Founder Institute. “When people have a list of people you need to know in the city, Coticchia’s name is usually on it,” his nominator said.
Alison Falk
Alison Falk
During the day, Falk works as a senior product manager for cybersecurity company VMware Carbon Black, which previously landed her on our list of top engineers. But she spends the rest of her time upskilling women in tech through the nonprofit WITPGH.
While she’s been a driving force in Pittsburgh tech for years, “2023 was a big year for Alison and her organization,” Falk’s nominator noted. WITPGH received financial support through the Build Back Better program, and is using it to build out equity-centered professional development in the robotics workforce. This year, WITPGH became an inaugural member of the Equity Impact Center Institute.
Rebecca Gazda
Rebecca Gazda
With nearly two decades of tech experience, Gazda started consulting firm Fractional Female Solutions in 2022 to connect women with jobs in leadership. She previously worked as the senior director of innovation labs at cyber firm DNSFilter. Gazda is also an active member of leadership at getWITit PGH and frequent speaker at local events like Cyburgh.
Ellie Gordon
Ellie Gordon
Gordon wears a lot of hats at digital health startup Behaivior. The CEO and founder also works hands-on as a designer for the mental health and addiction recovery tech company, helping redefine what recovery means by ensuring access to quality care.
Gordon has won a Pittsburgh Tech Council award and the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE, and remains outspoken on healthcare topics. She also leads the Pittsburgh Vegan Society.
Shannon Gregg
Shannon Gregg
Cloud Adoption Solutions, Gaggle Social
Gregg works for a Salesforce partner helping small- to medium-tech and life sciences companies adapt to the platform. She’s an influential force in the space, and can often be found giving talks at conferences. Well-connected in Pittsburgh and an adjunct professor at Point Park University, she also sits on a board of Dallas-based social network platform Gaggle.
Steven Guo
Steven Guo
CMU Tech & Entrepreneurship, Global Shapers Community
Guo is a health tech consultant who dedicates much of his time to social impact. As president of Carnegie Mellon University alumni organization CMU Tech & Entrepreneurship, he helps grads of the Pittsburgh powerhouse connect with training, opportunity, capital and mentorship. He helped design an accelerator and develops programming to further a stronger CMU alumni entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Guo is also the partnerships lead for the Pittsburgh Hub of the Global Shapers Community, an initiative of the World Economic Forum that brings together young adults working to build a better world.
Patrick Juola
Patrick Juola
Text analysis can be used for a lot of things, from author attribution to flagging for plagiarism. Juola innovates on a new approach, via a software program that can quickly and accurately analyze large amounts of documents. A faculty member at Duquesne University, he also works in the grad-level computer science department.
Juola recently won a Fulbright Scholarship, so he’ll be connecting communities in Pittsburgh and around the globe as he travels to Budapest, Hungary, to support natural language processing in more languages.
Zachary Lipton
Zachary Lipton
Lipton worked his way up to CTO and chief scientific officer at healthtech firm Abridge. He brought his background at Amazon AI to the buzzy startup — which recently raised a $150 million Series C — as a scientific advisor and helped it build a generative AI model for medical conversations. Beyond that, Lipton is also a writer, GitHub contributor and machine learning professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
Michael Lisanti
Michael Lisanti
CyLab at Carnegie Mellon University
CMU’s CyLab connects interdisciplinary experts to develop innovations in security. As director of partnerships, a lot of this connection-building falls on Lisanti. Those associations include some of the biggest global tech companies, plus behemoths in the Pittsburgh scene. Lisanti has spent more than 10 years building relationships, making him a well-connected local.
Charles Mansfield III
Charles Mansfield III
A CMU grad, Mansfield has immersed himself in the local startup scene. He has experience across two venture capital firms, Legendary Ventures and BlueTreeVC, connecting startups with the funds to help them grow. At InnovatePGH, Mansfield works as the ecosystem community and research manager. He’s a leader helping Gen Z get involved in the startup world, and getting the word out about the Pittsburgh Innovation District.
Christian Manders
Christian Manders
Every week, Manders brings together Pittsburgh’s life sciences industry for breakfast and networking. It’s free, and professionals rave about the event as a way to mix with recruiters, VCs, students and more. BioBreakfast hosts monthly VIP speakers, featuring high-level execs from established companies and government organizations. In his day job, Manders is COO of skingraft product developer Promethean LifeSciences.
Jordan Marinkovich
Jordan Marinkovich
Marinkovich is the platform community manager for startup ecosystem Innovation Works. Her nominator pointed out just how well-connected that position makes her, noting it’s basically Marinkovich’s job description to “provide meaning and value for her founders and mentors to accelerate the growth of the region.”
You can often find her spreading the word about local job listings in Pittsburgh tech or attending the various VC events in town. Marinkovich is also a part of the Pittsburgh Tech Council’s most recent L.A.U.N.C.H cohort, which provides mentorship to high school girls in STEM.
Andrew Millberg
Andrew Millberg
Millberg works as a senior vice president at real estate firm JLL, and uses that influence to help foster the Pittsburgh startup ecosystem. “He’s not just about brokering deals,” Millberg’s nominator said. “He’s also about building holistic spaces for innovation and community.”
On top of helping host various tech events with Black Tech Nation, Vibrant PGH and Women in Tech PGH, Millberg played a pivotal role in establishing the Robotics Factory. Located on “Robotics Row” in Lawrenceville, it aims to support relevant startups in the region.
Chris Moehle
Chris Moehle
The Robotics Hub provides VC support to local startups, and Moehle has been the force behind the org since 2015. As managing director, he connects Pittsburgh tech to a global network of innovation. Moehle’s works with several local boards — Ariel Precision Medicine, Allvision IO, Agility Robotics — making him a deeply ingrained member of the scene.
Kamal Nigam
Kamal Nigam
Nigam is as deeply embedded in the local tech scene as he is in efforts to make the city better. As the cofounder and senior engineering director for Google’s Pittsburgh hub, where he led work on the company’s shopping search product, he grew the office from 2 to 750 employees. He also taught machine learning at CMU, his alma mater.
After leaving Google in 2020 to become what he calls a “tech free agent,” Nigam launched and grew the Hear Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to facilitating connections between police and communities of color toward the goal of a safer city. He’s a former board member and still volunteers with Riverlife, an organization working to enliven and activate Pittsburgh’s riverfronts, and is secretary of the board of community philanthropy The Pittsburgh Foundation.
Daniela Osio
Daniela Osio
We featured Kloopify on our 2022 RealLIST Startups, highlighting its funding strides at the time. A lot has happened for the company since then, and founder Osio ended 2023 with her face on a Times Square billboard. She’s well-established in procurement and supply chain innovation, with a specific focus on sustainability. Osio’s connections with other executives go a long way in spreading top-level knowledge in Pittsburgh.
Albrecht Powell
Albrecht Powell
Despite Accenture’s worldwide reach as a major global IT service provider, Powell commits to keeping up with his local tech ecosystem. He’s the company’s Pittsburgh office leader, and works on inclusion and diversity initiatives across the firm. He spreads that message in the community, too. Powell frequently speaks at local colleges like Carnegie Mellon, and sits on the University of Pittsburgh’s Data and Analytics Advisory Board.
“He can regularly be found in the outdoors cycling, kayaking, and skiing,” his nominator said, “and is known for some unique charity adventures such as riding a bicycle 500 miles across Alaska in six days, and climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in a kilt all to support local and global charities.”
Jenny Sharpe
Jenny Sharpe
Sharpe works as the senior program manager for workforce development at the Pittsburgh Robotics Network (PRN), which is exactly what it sounds like. The organization brings together members of the robotics community, and works to grow the workforce in the region. Sharpe also sits as chair of the PRN’s Southwestern Pennsylvania Robotics Talent Advisory Committee. She previously led the Pittsburgh division of Venture for America, a pipeline of startup talent.
Teresa Whalen
Teresa Whalen
CytoAgents researches and develops ways to alleviate the symptoms of Cytokine Release Syndrome, a side effect of immunotherapy. Whalen leads this charge as CEO, which earned her a 2022 CEO of the year award from the Pittsburgh Technology Council.
She’s deeply involved in the community beyond that, too. Whalen’s on the board at St. Clair Hospital, which makes sense given her medical background. Through her work with the Next Act Fund and the BlueTree Venture Fund, Whalen also connects life sciences and women-led startups with the resources they need to grow.
Updated at 5:30 p.m.
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