Jose Plehn Dujowich is the CEO, Chief Data Officer, and Founder of BrightQuery (BQ) and BQ AI. He brings over a decade of experience with U.S. statistical agencies such as the IRS, Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Small Business Administration (SBA). His areas of expertise include economics, finance, data analytics, employment, payroll, financial and credit ratings, industrial organization, and artificial intelligence (AI).
In 2019, he launched BrightQuery to offer firmographics, financials, corporate family trees, and legal data on the U.S. economy, now encompassing data on over 100 million legal entities and 250 million locations. This extensive information is sourced from regulatory, tax, and legal filings, including those from the IRS, Department of Labor, SBA, SEC, and over 80,000 governmental jurisdictions. BrightQuery is set to celebrate its fifth anniversary in December 2024.
BQ AI, started in 2023, aims to construct a super-intelligence of the global economy beginning with the U.S. This initiative is designed to integrate a 'micro view' of individual entities with a 'macro view' that includes regions, industries, governments, and environment considerations, built from the ground up through a complex system of interacting components.
His contributions to AI and data analytics have been significant. He directed three NSF-funded projects, including the notable "AI-Ready Data Products to Facilitate Discovery and Use," which investigates enhancing statistical data products for easier integration and use by AI technologies.
Before founding BrightQuery, he was a senior advisor and co-founder of Powerlytics, where he developed IP to provide anonymized IRS tax data for all U.S. companies and households. His academic journey was marked by several prestigious roles, including Faculty and Executive Director at UCLA Anderson School of Management's Fink Center, where he published numerous works in top-tier journals.
He also served as an Adjunct Accounting Professor and Executive Director of the Center for Financial Reporting & Management at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. During his tenure, he founded the Berkeley Charter of Professional Accountancy (BCPA) and received the 2015 Notable Contribution to the Accounting Literature Award.
Before UC Berkeley, he was an Assistant Professor of Accounting at the Fox School of Business at Temple University and an Assistant Professor of Economics at SUNY Buffalo, where he helped found the Journal of Human Capital.
Jose earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago and holds a Bachelor of Science in Management Science and a Bachelor of Science in Economics from MIT. Born in New York to a Mexican family and raised in Geneva, Switzerland, his multilingual proficiency in English, Spanish, and French and his deep commitment to global economic equity are a testament to his diverse upbringing.
