With this, the sixth annual selection of Pittsburgh Pacesetters, we offer a group representing organizations that are among the region’s premier businesses. They are emblematic of some of our traditional commercial strengths and resources, including manufacturing, higher education and financial services.
They are leading the way into the future, creating and using technology that transforms how others do business in an increasingly complex and fast-moving world that offers opportunity to those who innovate. They are at the forefront of changes in the way businesses purchase energy, move and store goods, transfer data and manage their finances. Combined, they represent employment for about 14,000.
After a tumultuous and tenuous 2004 for the region, most should agree that it’s time to look forward to better days. Floods that wiped out businesses and residences took a heavy toll on communities — some already struggling, others making valiant efforts to rebound from economic listlessness — only to be pummeled by a natural disaster.
Fiscal troubles in Pittsburgh government served to blunt development and pit city against suburbs. Foreboding headlines warned of doom for US Airways and the impact its demise or retrenchment might have on a jewel of a regional asset, Pittsburgh International Airport. No less worrisome has been what effect its potential demise and the loss of all or some of the 6,700 local jobs it provides would have on the regional economy.
If there is a ray of hope, it is in the resolve that continues to reside in the business community. Past Pacesetter and real estate developer Eve Picker of no wall productions inc. persists in redeveloping the rich inventory of storied but tattered buildings in city neighborhoods.
Ed Dunlap of Centimark Inc., the nation’s largest commercial roofer, and his wife, Ann, have taken up the task of remaking and adding sparkle and panache to once-moribund white tablecloth restaurants including LaMont and The Colony. Richard Simmons, venture capitalist and chairman of the Pittsburgh Symphony board, has helped lead the city’s world-class orchestra back to fiscal solvency.
To the “Class of 2005” and to all of those selected as Pacesetters since 2000, we honor your accomplishments and admire your resilience, commitment and dedication. Even in the face of difficulty, you do, indeed, choose to set the pace.
