A major player in southwestern Pennsylvania’s economic evolution since World War II is rebranding.

The Allegheny Conference on Community Development will now be known as the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance.

Leaders made the announcement Wednesday at the Energy & Industrial Future Summit, Downtown.

Leroy Ball, the CEO of chemical company Koppers and incoming board chair for the alliance, said the new name shows that the group works across all 10 counties of southwestern Pennsylvania. Those counties include Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Lawrence, Washington, and Westmoreland.

“By operating the organization and all of its affiliates under the unified banner of Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, we improve the ability to market the region, attract transformative investments, advocate for critical infrastructure, and build regional workforce pipelines,” Ball said.

The conference was founded by industrialist Richard King Mellon to serve as a planning council for the region’s post-war economic future. Pittsburgh Mayor David L. Lawrence became an important partner after his election to office in 1945. The conference went on to work with civic and business leaders from Carnegie Tech, Heinz, Gulf, PPG, Alcoa, U.S. Steel, and Kaufmann’s, creating public-private partnerships to shape the area’s transformation.

Projects range from creating Point State Park and addressing pollution and flooding issues to devising an economic playbook of diversifying into university research, healthcare, and advanced manufacturing.

Leaders say the rebrand gives clarity to the Alliance’s effort to help Southwestern Pennsylvania “compete effectively for business, investment, talent, and transformational opportunities.”

It comes at a time when the region is positioned as “the epicenter of a new industrial renaissance” due to the rapid growth of artificial intelligence and the energy needed to power it.

The Allegheny Conference created the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance as the region’s business-attraction arm in the 1990s, and it has worked with other affiliated organizations including the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce and the Pennsylvania Economy League.

The name change “unifies these efforts under a single, cohesive brand designed to represent the full 10-county footprint,” according to the alliance.