Speaker Series - Rob Santoro

​Rob Santoro is the CEO and co-founder of Dization, a Pittsburgh company building a single hub for small and mid-sized businesses. The idea: small businesses run on disconnected tools and manual spreadsheets while large enterprises get clean, connected data. Dization pulls things like QuickBooks and HubSpot into one place and uses AI and automation to surface what's actually going on across projects, finances, customers, and resources, without needing a data team to read it.

​He got here on an engineering path, not a business one. Pitt engineering degree, a master's from Maryland, and early years at Westinghouse Nuclear and PKMJ, where he started as an entry-level computer engineer at a small nuclear engineering services startup alongside the person he'd eventually co-found Dization with. He went on to run digital for Rolls-Royce's Europe region before leaving in 2020 to build his own company.

​He also mentors Pitt founders through the Big Idea Competition, so he's spent real time with student teams and knows what a raw early idea looks like.

​The conversation: leaving a senior corporate role to start something from zero, what the first years of building actually look like, how an engineering background translates into running a company, and finding a real problem worth solving. Come with questions.

​Free and open to all students. Sennott Square 2400, Tuesday Nov 10 at 8:00 PM.