Check out the tech leaders who were honored at the 2021 Pittsburgh Smart 50 Awards

A new list of the smartest leaders in Pittsburgh just dropped.

Since 2014, the Smart Business Network has published its annual Pittsburgh Smart 50 Awards — a list of executives at the region’s 50 “smartest” companies. The network issues the same awards for nearby Cleveland and Columbus as well. To be considered for the awards, nominees must be top executives at a given company, with physical office space in the Pittsburgh region.

Though not limited to tech, this year’s awards, which were published last week, featured 18 executives from local tech companies across life sciences, autonomous vehicles, technical education and more.

While some names are a repeat from the 2020 Pittsburgh Smart 50 Awards, many in the tech industry were new, highlighting some of the more prominent names in the local economy today along with some up-and-comers to look out for. The growing recognition of tech companies big and small in the area, particularly from industry-agnostic organizations like the Smart Business Network, is a testament to just how prominent it has become in Pittsburgh’s economy.

Here are the 18 executives from tech companies honored in the 2021 awards, listed in alphabetical order by company. The full list of honorees is available here.

• Kinesh Doshi, Cofounder and CEO of Accion Labs US, Inc.
• Sreekar Gadde, Executive Director of BlueTree Allied Angels
• Edward Sheehan, President and CEO of Concurrent Technologies Corporation
• C.J. Handron, Cofounder and CEO of Diamond Kinetics, Inc.
• Marion Lewis, CEO of Govenda
• Ryan Green, Cofounder and CEO of Gridwise
• Nick Bartel, Cofounder and CEO of Idelic
• Bob Bashaw, President of II-VI Incorporated
• Tom McClellan, CEO of Intermed Labs
• Vivek Gupta, President and CEO of Mastech Digital
• Josh Fabian, Cofounder and CEO of Metafy
• August Chico, Founder of Parthian Battery Solutions
• Alicia B. Harvey-Smith, Ph.D., President of Pittsburgh Technical College
• Ben Wilson, CEO of Rivers Agile
• Benjamin Schmidt, Cofounder and CEO of RoadBotics
• Dennis Wilke,President of Rosedale Technical College
• Michael Zamagias & Christopher Johnson, Co-CEOs of TeleTracking
• Tara Rudnicki, President of Tobii Dynavox