Profiles Archives - Page 4 of 7 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

Minnesota is the ‘Land of 10,000 Lakes,’ and northern Minnesota, where I was born and raised, has more than its share. Because Duluth, my hometown, was built on a hill, we had a scenic view of Lake Superior from our home. To me, it was like an ocean. Duluth was a great place to be …

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Profiles

Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., Highmark CEO

by PQ Staff

At Highmark, we probably spend in the range of $25–30 billion a year in paying claims. That’s a lot of money, and we take the responsibility seriously to try to help organize a system that spends that money wisely—because ultimately that’s all of our money. So, why is healthcare broken? What’s going on? Let me …

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Profiles

Sala Udin, Community Organizer

by Jeff Sewald

My mother and father came to Pittsburgh during the great black migration from the South in the 1920s. They met and married here and took up residence in the lower Hill District. I was raised on Fullerton Street, which was the main drag leading to Wiley Avenue, the cultural heart of the lower Hill. From …

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Profiles

Pittsburgh Mayor: Who is Bill Peduto?

by Christine O'Toole

For his first vacation after his victory in the May mayoral primary, Bill Peduto booked his own stops, packed his own bag and took only one close companion: his iPhone. Within 24 hours, traveling between Helsinki and Stockholm, he used it to tweet the following: Great lunch meeting w/former Finnish diplomat to Baghdad 90-91 & …

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Profiles

The Lost Cyclist

by PQ Staff

On June 15, Pittsburgh will celebrate the completion of the Great Allegheny Passage, the 330-mile trail that stretches over the rugged Alleghenies to Cumberland, Md., where it links with the historic Chesapeake & Ohio Canal towpath and continues to Washington, D.C. Those who pedal the scenic, car-free route are following, at least in spirit, the …

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Profiles

Jared L. Cohon, Academician

by Jeff Sewald

My grandfather’s name was Kogonovich. He arrived at Ellis Island from Poland in 1918 and didn’t speak a word of English. The immigration agent he encountered somehow believed he had called himself “Cohen,” and apparently didn’t know how to spell that, so he wrote “C-O-H-O-N,” a highly unusual spelling of a very Jewish name. Let’s …

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Profiles

David McCullough, Author, Narrator, Historian & Lecturer

by Jeff Sewald

When he was about 15 or so and was reading about writers and their lives, one of my sons turned to me one evening and said, “Dad, I don’t think you’re ever going to be a really great writer.” “Why is that?” I asked him. He said, “You had way too happy a childhood.” And …

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Profiles

Dogs of Our Lives

by John Beale

Dogs play a significant role in the daily lives of many in our region. In Allegheny County, there were 102,289 dogs licensed in 2011. Dogs can add to quality of life both as companions and in service, as exemplified by “Daisy,” a Golden Retriever and Standard Poodle mix who is trained as a diabetes alert …

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Profiles

Kim Tillotson Fleming

by PQ Staff

Editor’s Note: Hefren-Tillotson CEO Kim Tillotson Fleming spoke recently at the quarterly CEO speakers series hosted by Pittsburgh Quarterly and Robert Morris University on its Moon campus. The following is her speech, somewhat abridged. I am a student of leadership. The more I know, however, the more I realize I don’t know. As a leader, …

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Profiles

Ed Rendell, Public Servant

by Jeff Sewald

I was born into a slightly upper-middle-class Jewish family in New York in 1944, and lived in Manhattan with my mother, father and older brother. My father was a converter in the textile industry. My mother was a designer whose family had a pretty successful sportswear business. At an early age, my dad ingrained in …

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Profiles

Edgar Snyder, Attorney

by Jeff Sewald

It all started back in 1977 with the U.S. Supreme Court case, Bates v. State Bar of Arizona. In that case, the Court held that lawyer advertising is commercial speech and as such is protected by the First Amendment. That decision totally upset the longstanding belief among lawyers that advertising their services somehow demeaned the …

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Profiles

Foundation of Steel

by Evan Pattak

How entrepreneurial is Jim Bouchard? Consider this: When he sold Esmark, Inc., the publicly held steel company he ran, to Russia’s OAO Severstal in 2008, the price was a whopping $775 million, a remarkable exit for a five-year-old company. But instead of cashing in his chips and retiring to the good life, Bouchard took the …

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Profiles

Jacqueline C. Morby, Businesswoman & Private Equity Investor

by Jeff Sewald

Pittsburgh has changed dramatically since I first arrived here in 1988. It’s much more entrepreneurial now. There are more small companies and greater interest in financing them. We still have a problem, however. We don’t have a Microsoft. None of the technology companies that originated locally have blossomed into anything particularly huge, which is something …

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Profiles

Keeping your Deals

by PQ Staff

I never really wanted a dog. But all eight of our children kept clamoring for a dog. One night—I think it was a summer night, because the Cardinals were in town—I finally said, “OK, you can have a dog.” Lots of cheering. The oldest son said, “When?” And I said, “When I get back from …

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Profiles

Dan Rooney, Steelers Chairman and 30th United States Ambassador to Ireland

by Jeff Sewald

The Irish like to say ‘it’s a long way from Newry’—where my family comes from originally—‘to Phoenix Park,’ where I now live and work as the U.S. ambassador to Ireland. But believe me, it’s a much, much longer way to Phoenix Park from the North Side of Pittsburgh. My life in professional football was always …

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Profiles

Richard P. Simmons

by PQ Staff

I am convinced that I am absolutely, positively the luckiest man in the world. During my business life, I seemed to be at the right place at the right time. When I graduated from college in 1953, metallurgy was at the beginning of a tremendous technology and manufacturing change, and I was part of it, because …

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Profiles

William S. Dietrich II, Businessman and Philanthropist

by Jeff Sewald

Once, Pittsburgh was the world capital of the steel industry and it was, as recently as 30 years ago, the third largest headquarters city in America. Back in the 1970s, when the mills began to shut down, we all sighed. “Well, there goes manufacturing. The muscles are gone. But at least the brains are still …

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Profiles

In the American Grain

by William S. Dietrich II

Who are the preeminent individuals in American business history? A strong case might be made for a quintet: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, John D. Rockefeller and Sam Walton. Who is primus inter pares? It’s Henry Ford in a walk-away. Here’s why: Ford was an industrialist, inventor, aircraft pioneer, museum curator, horticulturist, labor progressive, …

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Profiles

John Wetenhall, Ph.D., MBA

by Jeff Sewald

Very early one Sunday morning when I was in graduate school, I answered a phone call from a distinguished Stanford professor who summoned me in his gruff voice: “Get down to my office.” Albert Elsen, the great scholar on the sculpture of Auguste Rodin, had just been contacted by Raymond Nasher, a Dallas philanthropist and …

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Profiles

The Advisor: Jack Barbour

by Reid R. Frazier

He has a super bowl ring, a friend in the Governor’s mansion, and he’s in charge of one of the country’s biggest law firms. To boot, he’s got a dinosaur exhibit to his credit. But for all his achievements, you won’t find Jack Barbour too close to the limelight. Which is just how he likes …

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Profiles

Wheeling v. Pittsburgh

by Steve Franckhauser

Now he belongs to the ages.” Those famous words were uttered by U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton as the last breath of life fell from the lips of Abraham Lincoln. With the murder of Lincoln, the task of reconstruction would take a very different face and raise political retaliation in the U.S. to …

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Profiles

Arnold Palmer, Golfing Legend and Entrepreneur

by Jeff Sewald

I was born in 1929 and raised during the Great Depression in Latrobe, Pa. Life was pretty tough in those days, but thankfully, my mother, father, little sister and I were together a whole lot of the time. We played golf, skied and went to movies—things like that—but we were basically homebodies. I have many …

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