PITTSBURGH — David Holmberg explains that his first week on the job as the CEO of Highmark included a private lunch with the then-PNC Financial Chair Jim Rohr at the iconic Duquesne Club in the heart of the city.
The setting, which had him surrounded by rich paneled walls and the 19th-century paintings that once hung when men like Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller, and Andrew Mellon brokered deals, led Holmberg to believe that Rohr was about to discuss something significant, and he needed to prepare for it.
Holmberg said that he was right, but not in a way he could have imagined.
“Rohr says, ‘I just wanted to introduce myself. I know all about you, everything about your background. I’ve done all my homework. I know you’re going to do a great job, everybody tells me that. I’m not worried about that.’”
Holmberg explains what eventually became the founding principle of how he has conducted his professional life in the city as head of a nonprofit group that employs 44,000 regionally and serves millions nationally.
Holmberg recounts that Rohr leaned in and said, “Let me tell you why we’re having lunch. I want you to understand what your real job as CEO in this town is, and that is to make sure that this town is better off after you’ve been here than it was when you showed up.” Holmberg said that he took that to heart.
“I think you see that in the commitment that Bill Demchak has made at PNC, and you see that in the commitment that others have made to make this city better and to set the things in motion that allow us to do just that,” he said.
Holmberg said that he has tried to live up to that mission. Both as a CEO, but also as chairman of the Allegheny Conference, in working with the Pittsburgh Steelers, PNC Financial, and PPG Industries and the Cultural Trust. And not just in the work on the upcoming NFL Draft, which kicks off next week, but also in taking the lead in remaking the core of the business district, hoping to bring back people after COVID and the subsequent societal collapse that left the city in decay.
On Friday, Holmberg, who also chairs the Cultural Trust’s Board of Trustees and the Allegheny Conference on Community Development’s Board of Directors, will hold a press conference for the ribbon cutting of Arts Landing, a transformative four-acre park that includes a one-acre great lawn, garden walk, playroom, “flex zone” with pickleball courts, and a running track that he calls the cornerstone of a 10-year, $600 million plan to revitalize downtown Pittsburgh.
“Arts Landing was about getting people back, not just into the city, but also back into the theaters and getting them comfortable with that,” he said of the exodus of people coming into the city after the summer of George Floyd when protests were regular occurrences, crime rose, the drug trade grew, and homelessness took over the core of the city.
“We wanted to create a neighborhood that people could come again to live, work, and play. So we took four and a half acres of underutilized space, and we’ve transformed it into a park that will be able to do a concert for 4,000 or 5,000 people,” he said.
People can walk their dogs, play pickleball on the courts, and see a concert, all overlooking the Allegheny River with PNC Park and Acrisure Stadium across the three iconic steel bridges that connect the city core with the North Side.
To alleviate concerns about crime and homelessness, the park will have private security since it is private property, Holmberg said.
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“We do have control over it, there will be state-of-the-art technology plus live active support around it,” he said. “We’ve gone out to other cities around the country who have public space inside their city cores and we’ve learned from them and some of the things that they’ve experienced. But the fact that it’s private property will enable us to hold it to a different standard,” Holmberg noted.
The space is a reversal of fortune of sorts. Where a building was once torn down years ago to place a parking lot, a parking lot was torn down in this space to now make a park.
Holmberg said that the Cultural Trust, which is credited for remaking the city core along Liberty Avenue in the ’80s and ’90s from strip clubs and bars to performing arts theaters that offer Broadway shows, opera, and the like, bought the acreage at fair market value.
Holmberg was born in Columbus, Ohio, where his father was a factory worker for General Electric and Westinghouse, and his mother was a nurse. His first job at 14 was at the local McDonald’s, where he had to convince the franchise owner to hire him because the law at the time said you had to be 16 to work. He outworked the 16-year-olds there and went on to stay for three years. That defiance, willingness to take risks, and perseverance would define him.
Holmberg spent his first few years in Pittsburgh living in the center of downtown, running on the trails, eating in the local restaurants, and soaking up the unique culture — experiences that he credits with helping him understand the city.
He explained this was important as it gave him a different sense of the city. “What was working, what wasn’t working. I walked everywhere. I’m a runner, so I spent a lot of time running and I got a chance to feel the city at a different level. And that’s been really helpful to me,” he said.
“One of the things that I found that was really important is you got to remember where you come from and who you are. And when you have the privilege of being in a role like mine, it’s really important to make sure that you don’t lose sight of who you serve,” he said.
His trajectory from jewelry to healthcare is unconventional, “I wasn’t an insurance person and I wasn’t a healthcare person, but what I was was somebody who had bought a lot of insurance for thousands of people that I worked with,” he said of his work career trajectory.
He was also someone who worked in an industry where you sold things that people wanted but didn’t necessarily need–an experience that was helpful because, in his position, you need to understand what is really important to people and what they value in order to exceed their expectations.
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Historically, healthcare wasn’t that way. In healthcare, you tend to go where you’re told and to see who you’re told. It is one of the few things in our lives that you purchase but don’t really have a lot of options. By contrast, if you’re shopping for clothes and don’t like your options or how you’re being treated, you can move on or just go online.
When he came to Highmark, Holmberg said that he brought a different perspective: consumer focus. “And I said, ‘how do we change the way healthcare is delivered? How do we do this based on finding what’s important to people and exceeding their expectations?’ And that’s really guided us, certainly for the last decades or so.”
When Holmberg came to Pittsburgh, Highmark Health had a revenue of $14 billion. Today they are at $33 billion. He also walked into a Hatfield and McCoy-type healthcare war when UPMC, a dominant hospital network, sought to end its partnership with Highmark, a major insurer, forcing patients into chaotic out-of-network scenarios.
Then-state Attorney General Josh Shapiro intervened in 2019, resulting in an intense public and legal fight. This led to a long-term contract allowing Highmark customers to have access to UPMC facilities.
Highmark Health is the third-largest Blue Cross Blue Shield plan in the country. They also have 14 hospitals, 22,000 employees, and thousands of clinicians.
“We’ve taken a whole different approach to how we do things because we are totally ingrained in the markets that we’re in,” Holmberg said, adding, “We get to see people on their best days and we get to see them on the worst days. And for us, part of what we do is we’re responsible not only for delivering care, but also for making sure the care is affordable and making sure it’s accessible.”
Holmberg said that investing in Arts Landing was part of civic leadership’s desire to change the course of the direction of the city.
“Someone needed to do something. My personal point of view was this was bigger than any one company and it was bigger than any one government entity. And it was going to take the coalition of organizations to be able to restart and get us back on track,” he said.
The images of vacant streets, panhandlers, zombie drug addicts, empty storefronts are what men like Holmberg, Demchak at PNC Financial and the Steelers wanted to find a way to reverse. The NFL Draft coming to the city was a big part of it. But so was the overall health of the city.
“We needed to have a catalyst for that and get rejuvenated. What we did was we made a decision that we were going to work together and we’re going to focus first on how we jumpstart downtown and the revitalization,” he said.
It also ultimately led to Gov. Shapiro’s announcement last year of $600 million in revitalization projects.
“It was a team effort. It’s been a great journey. I mean, we’ve been able to accomplish a lot. We’re now obviously headed toward the draft next week and that was part of it,” he said.
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Holmberg said to drag the city kicking and screaming out of their rut, they had to get multiple things moving simultaneously. “So housing needed to move. We needed to give people a reason to live, work, and play in the city.”
As for his advice from Rohr, he says that he tries to live that every day.