Joanna Doven
Executive Director of AI Strike Team
Joanna Doven, one of the U.S.’s youngest big city mayoral press secretaries, led stakeholder relations and communications for Pittsburgh’s 2009 G-20 Economic Summit and in 2013 founded Premo Consultants. A graduate of the
world’s #1 AI school, Carnegie Mellon University, she has since helped some of the world’s largest companies and prominent real estate developers formulate game-changing ideas that resulted in record government funding, growth-generating strategic partnerships, and national media exposure. With a crisis communications background, Joanna thrives on creating out-of-the-box pivoting strategies. This has led to her success in working at the intersection of development and innovation where she serves as a senior strategic advisor to innovators bringing accelerated benefits and return on investment. She has recently partnered with leading urbanist Bruce Katz, authoring AI-based pieces in Governing Magazine, among other publications. She advises leaders of the region’s most transformational projects — including Downtown Pittsburgh’s most pivotal $200M conversion project.
In 2023, Joanna reshaped her consulting practice to help cities, developers and institutions remake themselves in the post-Covid world, including repositioning Downtowns for growth and advising how cities can lead in the new artificial intelligence economy. Her work as a strategist for Walnut Capital, the developer of Pittsburgh’s 34-acre Bakery Square development that’s home to Google and over 15 AI companies led to the reshaping of a commercial real estate and workforce strategy positioning a new AI Avenue Corridor.
Her expertise in strategic communications and partnerships led to the creation of an AI Working Group in Pittsburgh comprised of 20 stakeholders including the world’s #1 AI school, Carnegie Mellon, civic and nonprofit leader, and large and emerging tech companies including Duolingo, Google. This effort led to her organizing the inaugural AI Horizons Summit headlined by Governor Josh Shapiro and CNN’s Laurie Segall, the founder of Mostly Human Media. Notably, Joanna helped steer the signing of a historic partnership leading to Pittsburgh as Nvidia’s first “AI Tech Community.”
An expert positioner and energetic leader, Joanna’s no-barriers approach in helping clients unearth opportunities through big thinking, informing and leveraging deep governmental, corporate, civic and media relationships has earned her company’s respect from renowned business, government and nonprofit leaders.
As partner in Fezzik Energy, Joanna is working with strategic partners including municipal planning organizations, laborers and industrial property owners on transforming defunct steel sites into AI Factories to grow regional economies. It’s now well understood that AI consumes enormous amounts of power. The International Energy Agency predicts that by 2026, data centers alone could consume 1,000 terawatt-hours of electricity—double the amount in 2022 and comparable to the entire energy consumption of Japan. As the market evolves from data centers to AI factories, the demand for power will soar, driven by the supercomputing needs of self-driving cars, autonomous machines, and industrial robots.
Joanna Doven and Bruce Katz continue to author pieces communicating Pittsburgh’s significant advantage in the AI economy. The region sits atop one of the world’s largest natural gas reserves, has access to abundant water supplies, and boasts a skilled labor force.
Joanna is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, where she guest lectures graduate students. She is also a guest talk show host on the world’s first radio station, KDKA. Her crisis communications experience led to the creation of “On Crisis,” a podcast that featured Doven talking with leaders whose experiences with crisis management led to drastic career or company pivots. Joanna is currently repurposing the podcast to focus on the “crisis opportunity” in the rapidly evolving AI economy.
Customers Bancorp, Inc., and Executive Chair of Customers Bank, with US$22 billion in assets serving mostly commercial clients across the United States. Jay has an extensive and recognized background in banking. Prior to joining Customers Bank, he served as the Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Sovereign Bancorp, Inc. There, he grew the organization from an Initial Public Offering of $12 million to a market cap approaching $12 billion, crediting it as the 17th largest banking institution in the country. Jay has received various recognitions in the industry, including Financial World’s CEO of the Year, Turnaround Entrepreneur of the Year, and was named the Large Business Leader of the Year by the Chamber of Commerce. He has spoken at YPO Universities in Dubai and Hong Kong about Authentic Leadership and has also been a speaker at conferences around the world including Singapore, London, Paris, Madrid, Sydney, Prague, Dubai, and all over the US including the US Military Academy at West Point. Jay earned a Master of Business Administration from Wilkes University and graduated from the Harvard Business School’s Leadership Course for Executives.
professional, Luke came to the organization in 2022 with more than 20 years of experience in the public and private sectors.