When Bethlehem Steel was still pouring molten iron, a young Moravian College graduate named Ken Rampolla was learning the business on the company’s legendary Loop Course. Four decades later he has sold more American steel than almost anyone, helped build one of Pennsylvania’s fastest-growing breweries, and just been handed the job of keeping Bethlehem Steel’s story alive, all within a few miles of where he began.
Rampolla’s name turns up these days on the ownership group of Lost Tavern Brewing, which marked its 10th anniversary in Hellertown this month. But the beer is only the latest chapter in a Lehigh Valley career that traces the region’s entire arc, from the blast furnaces to what came after them.
Ken Rampolla, CEO of Responsive Marketing, Inc. and a co-owner of Lost Tavern Brewing.
Forged on the Loop Course
Rampolla earned an economics degree from Moravian College in 1979 (where he was also a four-year football letterman, later inducted into the school’s athletics hall of fame), before going to work for Bethlehem Steel Corporation. There he completed the company’s famed Loop Course, the rigorous management-training program that funneled generations of young hires into the steelmaker’s ranks, and spent roughly the first decade of his career in a series of sales and marketing roles, learning an industry that was, even then, beginning its long decline.
Building a Steel Empire as the Furnaces Cooled
In 1990, Rampolla struck out on his own, founding Responsive Marketing, Inc. (RMI) in Hellertown. The agency acts as an outsourced, direct sales force for top U.S. steel manufacturers, and over the years it grew into what his biographies describe as the largest steel sales agency in America, at one point representing 13 different domestic steel mills.
The timing is its own kind of Lehigh Valley story: even as Bethlehem Steel itself faltered and ultimately stopped making steel in the 1990s, Rampolla was building a thriving business selling the product the region was once synonymous with.
An Unlikely Second Act in Craft Beer
The brewery came almost by accident. Childhood friends Robert Grim and Anthony Gangi had spent years honing a homebrewing hobby when they brought the idea of a Hellertown brewery to Rampolla and his son, Kenny. The four became partners, and Lost Tavern Brewing opened its first taproom on July 1, 2016. It has since grown to three Lehigh Valley locations, including a downtown Bethlehem taproom in the Moravian Book Shop, and a reputation as one of the fastest-growing breweries in the state, known for live music, food trucks and its pediatric-cancer charity event, Hops 4 Hope.
The National Museum of Industrial History in Bethlehem, set on the former Bethlehem Steel site, where Rampolla now chairs the board.
Keeping the Steel Story Alive
Rampolla’s latest role brings the journey full circle. Having joined the board of the National Museum of Industrial History in 2021, he was elected its board chair on June 25, 2026, succeeding L. Charles Marcon, who had led the board for 12 years. The museum sits on the former Bethlehem Steel site, the same ground where his own career started, and works to preserve America’s industrial heritage for a new generation. As chair, he is expected to help guide the museum through a major expansion known as its ‘Next Level’ project, along with new educational and community programming.
“Our mission remains both important and timely,” Rampolla said on taking the post. “We have an opportunity to connect the past with the future. We can inspire young people to explore science, technology, engineering, and skilled trades.”
It is a fitting charge for someone whose own life has bridged the Valley’s industrial past and its reinvented present. Rampolla is also a longtime Moravian University trustee who chaired its board beginning in 2012, steering major campus construction and renovations, and received the university’s Medallion of Merit in 2021: Moravian roots he shares with his wife, Anne (McCandless) Rampolla, a fellow member of the Class of 1979 who went on to teach Spanish at Lehigh University. Through it all, he has spent his career proving that the story of Lehigh Valley steel didn’t end when the furnaces went cold. It just changed shape.
Why It Matters
Ken Rampolla’s path (steel, then selling steel, then beer, then safeguarding the memory of it all) is, in miniature, the story of the Lehigh Valley itself: a region that lost its defining industry and reinvented itself around small business, culture and heritage. That the man now charged with telling that story also helped pour its newest chapter, one pint at a time, feels exactly right.
Ken Rampolla at a Glance
Education: Moravian College, Class of 1979 (B.A. in economics; four-year football letterman and athletics hall of famer); later chaired the university’s Board of Trustees and received its Medallion of Merit (2021).
Bethlehem Steel: Completed the company’s Loop Course and spent his first decade in sales and marketing roles.
Responsive Marketing, Inc.: Founded the Hellertown steel sales agency in 1990; it grew to represent 13 U.S. steel mills and is billed as the largest of its kind in America.
Lost Tavern Brewing: Co-owner with son Kenny and partners Robert Grim and Anthony Gangi; opened in Hellertown in 2016, now three Lehigh Valley locations.
National Museum of Industrial History: Board member since 2021; elected board chair June 25, 2026, on the former Bethlehem Steel site.
