About

About Jose Plehn Dujowich

Jose Plehn Dujowich is the CEO, Chief Data Officer, and Founder of BrightQuery (BQ) and BQ AI. He has more than ten years of academic experience working with U.S. statistical agencies, including the IRS, Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Small Business Administration (SBA). His expertise includes economics, finance, data analytics, employment, payroll, financial ratings, credit ratings, industrial organization, and artificial intelligence (AI).

Jose founded BrightQuery in 2019 to provide firmographics, financials, corporate family trees, and legal information on the U.S. economy. The information comprises over 100 million legal entities, 70 million organizations, 150 million employees and business owners, and 250 million locations. BQ sources this information from regulatory, tax, and legal filings, including the IRS, Department of Labor, SBA, SEC, and over 80,000 governmental jurisdictions. BQ will celebrate its fifth anniversary in December 2024.

Formed in 2023, BQ AI is an initiative to build a super-intelligence of the global economy, beginning with the U.S., by leveraging BQ’s proprietary database. It is being built from the ground up at the atomic level by modeling the economy as a complex system of interacting companies, consumers, households, governments, and events. BQ AI will connect the “micro view” of particular companies and people to the “macro view” of regions, industries, governments, and the environment.

NSF-Funded Projects

Jose’s research, all related to artificial intelligence and data analytics, is being funded by the National Science Fund (NSF). He is the project director of three NSF projects. One of the projects, for example, “AI-Ready Data Products to Facilitate Discovery and Use,” explores how a future National Secure Data Service (NSDS) could provide shared information and tools for making statistical data products more readily ingestible by AI technologies. These resources could support federal agencies and their partners throughout the data and evidence ecosystem as they balance the risks and rewards of leveraging generative AI to expand the reach of their statistics.

A Bespoke Career in Academia

Prior to founding BQ, Jose Plehn was Senior Advisor and Co-founder of Powerlytics. He contributed IP to co-found Powerlytics, which provides aggregated anonymized IRS tax returns on all U.S. companies and households. 

Before his focus shifted to entrepreneurship, Jose held numerous positions at prestigious universities. He was the Faculty and Executive Director of the Fink Center at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. While at UCLA Anderson School of Management, Jose published work in The Accounting Review, Small Business Economics, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Review of Economic Dynamics, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, and Economics Letters. He has also published in many other peer-reviewed journals over the years.

He also held the position of Adjunct Accounting Professor at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and Executive Director of the Center for Financial Reporting & Management at the Haas School of Business. While at UC Berkeley, he founded the Berkeley Charter of Professional Accountancy (BCPA), a leading accounting program. Also, while at UC Berkeley, Jose received the 2015 Notable Contribution to the Accounting Literature Award for his work, “Demand Uncertainty and Cost Behavior.” The American Accounting Association (AAA) and the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) grant the award annually. 

In addition to his award, Jose has received numerous other grants and academic honors.

Prior to joining UC Berkeley, Jose Plehn was an Assistant Professor of Accounting at the Fox School of Business at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, and an Assistant Professor of Economics at SUNY Buffalo. During his time at SUNY Buffalo, Jose Plehn Dujowich helped found the Journal of Human Capital, published by the University of Chicago Press.

He has served as an Advisory Board Member for the Business, Technology, and Engineering Division at  Berkeley Extension and as a Member of the Society of Chief Data Officers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge.

Education

Jose Plehn earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Management Science, specializing in Information Systems, from MIT Sloan School of Management and a Bachelor of Science in Economics, with a minor in Mathematics from  MIT.

Background

Born in New York, Jose is of Mexican origin and spent his early childhood in Mexico City. He then grew up in Geneva, Switzerland, where his parents worked for the United Nations. Jose’s father was a senior diplomat with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), helping poorer, exporting countries negotiate with more affluent countries. From his father, Jose developed his appreciation for helping the world economy, reducing inequality, and protecting the environment.

Having lived in different parts of the world, Jose is fluent in English, Spanish, and French.

Helping Small Businesses

For two years, Jose Plehn Dujowich and BrightQuery have provided free reports for small businesses for policymakers and the population at large with the NFIB. BrightQuery also formed a strategic alliance with BAI, providing free reports on the state of small businesses to banks.