Jonathan Kersting Has Been Telling Pittsburgh’s Tech Story for 29 Years. He’s Just Getting Started.
The Pittsburgh Technology Council’s VP of Communications reflects on nearly three decades inside the ecosystem, the stories that shaped him, and why the best chapter for Pittsburgh tech is still ahead.
Sometime around 2001, Jonathan Kersting rode his bike past a small office in Beechwood and thought about the people inside. He didn’t stop. He didn’t knock. He just knew something interesting was happening there, and filed it away.
That company was Vivisimo. The founder was Raul Valdes-Perez. Years later, after dozens of check-ins and profiles and radio appearances, Raul would sell the company to IBM. Jonathan would be the one who had documented the whole arc.
That’s the job, if you do it the way Jonathan does it. Not covering the ecosystem from the outside looking in, but moving through it, alongside it, year after year, until you’ve been tracking founder stories long enough to see how they end.
As VP of Communications & Media at the Pittsburgh Technology Council, Jonathan has spent 29 years doing exactly that. He co-hosts TechVibe Radio, oversees TEQ Magazine, and has attended every Tech 50 since it launched. He is, in the most literal sense, one of the people Pittsburgh tech has spoken through for three decades.
We sat down with Jonathan for the first installment of Inside the Ecosystem, Innovation Works’ new spotlight series highlighting the founders, builders, and connectors shaping Pittsburgh’s innovation community. What follows is his take on what it means to tell this city’s story.
“Having a Lot of Fun”
Ask Jonathan to describe what he does in one sentence and he doesn’t hesitate.
“Having a lot of fun,” he says, and then unprompted explains why that’s not a deflection. “My whole mantra in life is, if I’m not laughing throughout the day and having fun as much as possible, then what’s the point? I take my job very seriously, but I always go through my day trying to make people laugh and make myself laugh. That’s the only way I can live.”
Twenty-nine years at the same organization is a rare thing in any industry. At the Pittsburgh Technology Council, it’s practically unheard of. But for Jonathan, the answer to why he stayed is less about loyalty than it is about what the job keeps giving him.
What Made Him Stay
What makes Jonathan keep going? “The amount of awesome, fun stories I get to tell,” he says. “At the Tech Council, with our members over the years, I’ve literally followed companies from formation to exit. You feel like you’re family with these companies and these people. I’ve developed so many deep relationships and awesome friends that are our members that to me it’s like, you never know what the next great thing is going to be.”
He describes the honor of playing “a little role” in telling those stories as they evolved, a phrase he returns to throughout the conversation with a genuineness. For Jonathan, the story is never really about him. It’s always about the company, the founder, the moment.
“Time goes by really fast and all of a sudden you’re like, ‘Oh my god.’ And you’re like, ‘What’s not to like?’ I’m coming to work, I’m having fun, I love the people I work with, I love the members I get to cover, they’re paying me , I don’t know what’s wrong with this equation.
– Jonathan Kersting |
Part of what has kept things fresh, he says, is the technology. Jonathan has adapted his storytelling through every major platform shift, from print to podcast, podcast to video, and now into AI-assisted content production. “Taking things out into the podcast world, then diving more into video, and now with AI, it’s just allowed me to get even more stories out there. It almost gives me a team of content producers that helps me distill a story down, find shorts, different things. It just makes it more fun.”
The Story That Stuck
We already mentioned Vivisimo. But it’s worth slowing down on, because the way Jonathan tells it says more about how he works than any job description could.
He first encountered Raul Valdes-Perez at Kiva Han on Craig Street around 2000, before the company existed. Raul was describing a technology he called “like a Google for enterprise” — a search engine for internal use at large companies. Jonathan filed it away.
What followed was a years-long front-row seat to one company’s full life cycle. Jonathan tracked Vivisimo from a small office in a converted house in Beechwood to a growing operation in Squirrel Hill , where he famously nudged Raul to put a sign on the building so people knew what was happening inside. “He called me when he got the sign up and told me. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s so cool.'”
But what made the story memorable wasn’t just the arc. It was the intentionality behind it.
“He didn’t just go out and get gobs of VC the way a traditional company would, just to grow fast and flip something. It was really fun to watch him be intentional.” When Vivisimo was ultimately acquired by IBM, Jonathan had documented the whole journey, five or six profiles, three or four radio appearances, and years of quiet progress. “Being able to document that full life cycle has just been super, super cool.”
– Jonathan Kersting |
What 29 Years Looks Like
When Jonathan started at the Tech Council, he had just left a reporting job at the McKeesport Daily News. He didn’t come in with deep knowledge of Pittsburgh’s tech sector, he came in looking for a change.
“My first day on the job, I met with a startup company where the founders were younger than me. I was 25 at the time and I think the founders were like 22. And I was like, ‘Oh those guys are so young.’ I just had no idea. I came from a newspaper. I didn’t know much about our tech sector.”
What he noticed almost immediately: nobody was covering these companies. “The regular media at the time was not covering them. They weren’t making headlines.” Over the next three decades, that changed fundamentally.
“Now, they’re in the Business Times on a regular basis, not just as a special feature, but as the companies that are producing wealth and generating output. I feel like our industry has matured a lot. The city and the region now recognizes tech as being a major contributor to what’s really making Pittsburgh a vibrant place right now. Before, there wasn’t that recognition.”
What He’s Focused On
These days, Jonathan’s primary focus is getting Pittsburgh stories in front of audiences that have never heard them. Not just within the region, beyond it.
He points to a recent collaboration with WTAE’s Kelly Sasso as an example of what that looks like in practice. After helping connect her with Tech Council members in the space industry for an hour-long documentary, the relationship led to another story, this time about Humotech, a Pittsburgh company building exoskeleton and prosthetics technology founded by a married couple.
“She grabbed the story. That story got picked up and played in affiliates in different parts of the country. Someone in New Orleans saw it, reached out to them, and came to Pittsburgh to be fitted.” Jonathan shakes his head, still stoked about it. “I played a little role in helping them get a story out that wasn’t through my channels, but just getting their story out. That made my weekend.”
That’s the work: not just publishing content, but making connections that create real business outcomes for the companies he covers.
– Jonathan Kersting |
The Mistake Pittsburgh Founders Keep Making
Ask Jonathan about the most common mistake Pittsburgh tech companies make when it comes to telling their story and the answer is immediate: humility.
“People are too humble. I think sometimes people feel like they don’t have a story to tell, or they don’t actually recognize the impact, or dare I say the ‘coolness’, of their technology. They’re very wrapped up in it. So they can’t see the forest for the trees.”
He describes conversations with member companies where a founder will mention something almost in passing, something that sounds, to an outside ear, genuinely remarkable, and reacts with confusion when he tells them it’s a great story. “They’re kind of like, ‘Huh?'”
It’s the classic Pittsburgh work ethic showing up as a liability. “They’re busy innovating, busy making payroll, finding the next customer. They’re not always realizing the importance of telling their story, and how that folds into their marketing.” The stakes, he says, have never been higher. “In this world now, everyone’s searching for something, and AI is looking for something. You’ve got to have your stuff out there.”
What Coastal Investors Are Missing
On the question of coastal investors overlooking Pittsburgh, Jonathan takes a beat, thinking through how to say it. What comes out is part pitch, part provocation.
“Pittsburgh startups can often make a big impact with far less capital than companies on the coasts. While a venture capitalist might invest $10 million or more into a coastal startup, a $1 million investment here can significantly accelerate a company’s growth. Our entrepreneurs know how to stretch every dollar, often doing more with what might be considered “crumbs” elsewhere than other companies can do with much larger checks.“
He’s careful not to undersell the companies themselves. The point isn’t that Pittsburgh companies are cheap. The point is that they’re scrappy, capital-efficient, and overlooked, which is exactly what makes them interesting. “If you want to be creative, come here and you’re going to find some neat opportunities. You might actually enjoy Pittsburgh.”
– Jonathan Kersting |
Why Manufacturing Gives Him Hope
When asked what gives him the most hope about Pittsburgh’s future, Jonathan doesn’t go to the obvious answers. He goes to manufacturing.
“We’re not relying on just one key vertical to grow. And the fact that so much of what we do is around manufacturing, to me, that’s super exciting. Because manufacturing has never gone away and we’re always going to need manufacturing. That’s our roots, 250 years back.”
He sees the intersection of technology and the region’s industrial history as Pittsburgh’s most underappreciated asset. So much so that he’s building around it directly. “I’m literally going to be spinning up a whole video series just talking about manufacturing and technology and what’s going on, because there’s so much opportunity to optimize and create some very disruptive things within manufacturing.”
The Next Chapter
Knocking on his 30th year at the Tech Council, he’ll hit the milestone in 2027 , Jonathan has been doing some thinking. Not about slowing down, but about what the next stage of impact looks like.
“I don’t ever want to retire. I want to keep telling more stories. But I also feel like this is a time in my career where I want to help the next generation come along. I want to help the next generation of storytellers start telling more stories, any insight I can provide, and then I can get the hell out of their way so they can do what they’re doing.”
It’s a phrase worth sitting with: get out of the way. For someone who has spent 29 years being one of the loudest, most consistent voices for Pittsburgh tech, the idea of stepping back, even partially, says something about how he thinks about legacy. It’s not about the byline. It’s about the ecosystem.
“I’ve had so many people help me over the years. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to be helpful to the next generation. Because I’m seeing some things popping up now that I’m really excited about, and that’s only going to help Pittsburgh be bigger and better and more robust.”
– Jonathan Kersting |
Twenty-nine years in, knocking on 30, Jonathan Kersting is thinking less about what he’s built and more how he can help others. He understands something that most people take a long time to learn: the best thing you can do for a story is make sure someone else is ready to tell it.
The next generation of Pittsburgh storytellers is out there. He’s looking for them.
You can follow Jonathan on LinkedIn and catch him weekly on TechVibe Radio on KDKA 1020 AM / 100.1 FM alongside Pittsburgh Technology Council CEO Audrey Russo.