Comparing company employees to a sports team is a well-worn management trope, but Kelley Gay knows as well as anyone the value of translating the experience of a championship-level athlete to the corporate world. She graduated from one of the most lauded team cultures in the history of college athletics: the University of Connecticut’s women’s basketball program. In 1995, Gay played forward on UConn’s first women’s national championship team. Earlier this month, the UConn women’s program won its 12th national championship, all under coach Geno Auriemma.   Today, Kelley Gay is senior vice president and chief marketing officer of OneAmerica Financial, the largest private company based in Indianapolis. But the lessons she learned from her father, a former NFL lineman, and on the court with UConn are still top of mind. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Gay discusses the importance of learning your role in a large organization while understanding how everyone contributes, when to celebrate your successes and when to push your team to accomplishments they might not believe they can achieve. She also explains her role on the local host committee for July’s WNBA All-Star Weekend in Indianapolis—essentially an all-star team of Indy-area executives comprised largely of women.  

This week’s IBJ Podcast features a conversation from our Forty Under 40 awards breakfast last week with Maureen Weber, the winner of this year’s Alumni Award.  Maureen was originally a Forty Under 40 honoree in 2010. Back then, she had just finished reorganizing the Indiana Department of Education and had taken a job as director of community outreach and engagement at Clarian Health, now Indiana University Health. Sixteen years later, Maureen is president and CEO of Early Learning Indiana. She said she took the job because she saw the opportunity to transform the lives of young children, especially vulnerable ones. IBJ Editor Lesley Weidenbener talked with Maureen on stage about the work Early Learning Indiana is doing today and about leadership and learning from failure. You can read more about Maureen and see our latest Forty Under 40 class here.

You don’t need to be too technically savvy to pick up on the charged atmosphere surrounding large-scale data centers. Various technology-heavy industries need data centers as a kind of way station and storage point for all the electronic information they generate and process. As technology evolves at a breakneck speed, the size of these centers grows. In October, the financial firm Blackstone forecast that over the next five years, the United States will see $1 trillion in data center investments. Indiana really wasn’t on the map of the big tech firms, at least in terms of building centers, until very recently. In the last 14 months, seven data center projects have been announced for the state representing more than $15 billion in potential investment. Some Indiana legislators see them as huge economic development opportunities. Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers, has said, quote, “I want every data center that we can get in the state of Indiana.” But the sudden surge in announced centers has generated a lot of concern as well about their drain on Indiana utilities and, in some cases, their water-intensive cooling systems. Indiana lawmakers are considering a spate of bills regarding data centers in the current legislative session. IBJ technology reporter Susan Orr is our guest this week on the IBJ Podcast to get us current on the demand for data centers and how that’s manifesting in Indiana.

You might recognize Indianapolis-based Bosma Enterprises as a not-for-profit that helps Indiana residents who are blind or visually impaired. Its business model includes providing products and services for the public and private sector. This provides jobs for people with vision loss who otherwise would face a 70% unemployment rate. In fact, more than half of Bosma’s employees are blind or visually impaired—including its vice president of external affairs, Lise Pace.  She was climbing the ladder in the banking industry in the early 1990s when she learned that she would eventually lose her sight to a disease called retinitis pigmentosa. Married and the mother of a young son, she slowly retreated into a dark and isolated life as she lost most of her sight, stopped working and became a stay-at-home mom. As she says, “I didn’t know how to be someone who was blind.” In this week’s episode of the IBJ Podcast, Pace tells the story of how her son inspired her to break out of a years-long funk and start volunteering. That led to a full-time job at Bosma and then a raft of promotions that brought her to her current position as a company executive. You could see her as a prime example of how someone with limited sight can excel in the corporate world. Indeed, one of Bosma’s missions is to help clients learn the skills required for succeeding in almost any business environment. But as Pace acknowledges, employers considering visually impaired applicants also need to see beyond sight impediments and trust the results from past work history.

In 1979, musician Chuck Surack started a business in Fort Wayne called Sweetwater Sound by creating a mobile recording studio in a Volkswagen Bus. Fast-forward a bit more than four decades, and Sweetwater has evolved into one of the nation’s most prominent e-commerce sites for musical instruments and audio gear, with $1.6 billion in sales for 2022. Surack and his wife, Lisa, had total ownership of the company until 2021 when they sold a big stake to a private equity firm. The Suracks have used that money to help further their already extensive philanthropic giving. Chuck also has more time to focus on Surack Enterprises, a collection of companies unrelated to Sweetwater, including several that stem from his interest in aviation. And that’s the reason why Chuck has been in the news in Indianapolis in recent weeks. The Indianapolis Airport Authority wants to decommission the Indianapolis Downtown Heliport, a move that’s supported by the city of Indianapolis due to the site’s attractiveness for redevelopment. Chuck is helping lead the charge to persuade the Federal Aviation Administration to deny permission to decommission the heliport. Chuck has a helicopter charter company that uses the heliport, but he also joins aviation experts and the Indiana Department of Transportation in arguing that the heliport is uniquely positioned to advantage of new developments in urban aviation. That includes electric aircraft that can take off and land vertically. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Surack sheds more light on his decision to sell a controlling stake in Sweetwater and step away from day-to-day operations. And he explains the reasoning behind his desire to keep the heliport open. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

In the 38 years that Steve Sanner has owned and operated Jiffy Lube oil change shops in Indiana, he has laid down some serious tread marks. He is owner and president of Jiffy Lube of Indiana, which counts 51 locations and about 510 employees altogether. That’s the vast majority of the Jiffy Lubes in the state. But he hasn’t been content to simply make his mark as a major Jiffy Lube franchisee. He has volunteered at the highest levels of some of central Indiana’s highest profile organizations, including the Indiana Sports Corp., the local organizing committee for the Big Ten Football Championship and the Washington Township Schools Foundation. And he has used his Jiffy Lubes as a platform for some surprising community-minded initiatives. He has supported Indiana artists by commissioning 30 murals for his stores. He’s kicking off a campaign called “No ticket, let’s fix it,” in which police officers around the state give motorists $25 Jiffy Lube gift cards to get minor car repairs, at a total retail value so far of $300,000. It’s a great way to get motorists into Jiffy Lube, but Sanner says he also wants to promote positive interactions between police and motorists while keeping roads safer. Sanner is the guest for this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast. He starts with a few wild stories about his early days as an entrepreneur and how he got a foothold as a Jiffy Lube franchisee. He reacts to some of the common complaints that consumers have about oil change shops. And he talks at length about his secondary career as a volunteer, including being in charge of all of the laundry in the March Madness bubble when Indianapolis hosted all of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in 2021. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

The owners of Homefield, a maker of T-shirts, sweatshirts, and other apparel for college sports fans, haven’t necessarily been upset with all of the upsets during March Madness this year. The firm was founded by recent Indiana University graduate Connor Hitchcock and his wife, Christa, built off of a side project called Hoosier Proud. It seems like college gear is everywhere, and that initially gave Connor pause when considering whether to take the Indiana-focused venture national. But he and Christa landed on a formula to help Homefield to stand out: Using premium materials and creating unusual designs that draw on a school’s vintage iconography, and then moving at the speed of the internet when a particular school hits big. So, for example, in the first few hours after Fairleigh Dickinson University beat Purdue in the first round of the men’s tournament this year, Homefield was in touch with licensing officials for FDU, designing a series of shirts and notifying its followers on Twitter. It did the same thing last year when St. Peters University made a run in the tournament. Both schools are squarely in Homefield’s comfort zone as small universities that don’t necessarily have robust apparel programs. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Connor and Christa explain how they parlayed their success with small schools into agreements with the bigger names. They also dig into how they landed on Homefield’s winning strategy and how they’ve grown the firm to 40 employees in five years while maintaining a four-day workweek and keeping the emphasis on their staff’s quality of life. That includes all weekends off, even during the tournament. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

After the immediate fallout of the Great Recession, apartment development in downtown Indianapolis surged. Just in the last decade, the number of downtown apartment units has more than doubled to the current total of about 15,000 units. Indianapolis and other major cities across the nation are trying to encourage apartment development, especially as downtowns face an existential crisis brought about by the pandemic—namely, the loss of office workers in their downtown cores to remote working. One of the hottest trends is to take existing office towers and convert them into apartment buildings. And it’s happening with other major commercial structures, like downtown malls. We’re seeing that now in Indianapolis, with the conversion of the AT&T building and the plans for the Gold Building. The redevelopment of Circle Centre Mall very likely will have apartments, and as the city tries to find new uses for past-their-prime municipal properties, it’s often making residential uses a priority. For this week’s edition of the podcast, we have a three-person panel to explore the reasons behind the recent surge, the city’s desire to encourage apartment development, and future prospects for continued development and how that could affect downtown. Joining us are apartment market specialist George Tikijian, real estate developer Eric Gershman and deputy mayor of economic development Scarlett Andrews. Here’s our conversation. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

The Federal Reserve is expected to raise interest rates again next week as it continues to try to cool inflation. The silver lining is that when lending rates rise, savings rates also rise. It’s not unusual now to see certificates of deposits with 4% or 5% annual yields locked in over 12 to 24 months. Money market accounts are now paying healthy returns as well. Millennials and members of Gen Z should take note, because they probably haven’t experienced interest rates this high for savings in their adult lives. It's difficult to get many Americans to put away an appropriate amount of money for retirement or a financial emergency. Late last year, Congress passed a significant revision to the rules for retirement plans with the intent of extending and expanding your saving opportunities and ability to put away money for retirement. It’s not just for folks preparing to hobble across the finish line. The changes also can help people still paying off their college loans and those who need to establish their first emergency funds. For this week’s podcast, IBJ columnist Pete Dunn, aka Pete The Planner, explains these new opportunities for savings. He also shares a tip for avoiding an interest-rate trap that current homeowners could fall into if they try to level up on housing. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

The Indiana General Assembly just reached the midpoint of its 2023 legislative session and passed some deadlines for advancing bills, which has pushed at least two-thirds of them back to the curb—at least for this session. So this is a great time to take stock of the bills that made the cut and those that tanked. As usual, education funding has been at the center of major debate. Lawmakers also are hip-deep in social issues, such as so-called “ESG investing” and potential bans on library books some people believe are inappropriate for minors. The Legislature likes to trumpet its efforts to make the state more business-friendly, and different ways to lower business taxes have been under discussion. For this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, regular host Mason King is turning the discussion over to Managing Editor Greg Weaver, who’s been covering state government for decades, and IBJ statehouse reporter Peter Blanchard. And they have invited a guest to help flesh out the discussion: Casey Smith, a reporter for Indiana Capital Chronicle, who recently authored a scoop on a major omission in the Indiana House Republicans’ school funding plan. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

One of the most persistent questions about downtown Indianapolis since its 1980s resurgence has been, “Is downtown safe?” In the Feb. 17 issue of IBJ, reporters  Mickey Shuey and Taylor Wooten presented statistics for violent and nonviolent crime indicating that downtown remains one of the city’s safest areas, in particular in terms of crimes per capita. Here’s the rub: Statistics often don’t matter as much as perception. And good luck quoting statistics to someone who has been the victim of a crime. Since safety is a prime concern of business owners and executives whose operations are based downtown, IBJ Podcast host Mason King spoke to two entrepreneurs who have drawn different conclusions about downtown safety and made very different decisions about their downtown operations. Greg Harris is the founder of Backhaul Direct, and Andrew Elsener is a co-founder of Spot (formerly known as Spot Freight). Harris decided to pack up and relocate Backhaul Direct’s offices to Fishers after being attacked downtown and hearing other employee concerns about safety. Meanwhile, Elsener decided to open an additional office downtown—although he has concerns about incidents of theft and the shaky state of some downtown infrastructure. In fact, Elsener recently moved his entire family to the Mile Square, just a block north of Monument Circle. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

Wheeler Mission has been an integral part of downtown for more than 100 years and is intrinsically linked to quality of life issues and downtown’s image. It’s now in the middle of its first leadership transition in 33 years. When Rick Alvis became president and CEO in 1990, Wheeler Mission had 17 employees and an annual budget of about $700,000. Today, it has about 200 employees and an annual budget of nearly $20 million. On any given night, it provides shelter for about 550 people, which is about a third of all people experiencing homelessness in Indianapolis. And it’s widely known for its shelter services—to the chagrin of some downtown residents—although those services account for just one spoke in a four-pronged strategy to help men, women and children get the basic services they need, acquire job skills, move to stable housing and eventually become self-sufficient. Now 70 years old, Alvis is retiring soon and helping ease the transition for his successor, Perry Hines, who became Wheeler’s chief development officer in 2021. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Alvis and Hines discuss Wheeler’s evolution over the last three decades, perceptions of Wheeler in the community, perceptions of the homeless population downtown in recent years and why they think it’s important that Wheeler remain based downtown. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.    

In his mid-20s, Christian Resiak decided to learn how to hand-stitch leather handbags. He went to thrift stores, bought all of the leather jackets he could find and set up a workspace in his basement. He sold his first bag on Etsy within a month. He called his fledgling company Howl + Hide, partly in reference to his talkative Siberian Husky. Eight years later, Resiak has built Howl + Hide into a million-dollar business with 17 employees without the help of any investors or bank financing. Howl + Hide’s flagship location in Fountain Square doubles as its main retail site—where it sells a wide variety of handbags, tote bags, duffels, keychains and wallets—and its main production facility. But that will change in the near future as Resiak plans to at least double his employee base and double—maybe triple—his sales this year, with some partnerships with national brands on the way. In conversation with podcast host Mason King, Resiak details the process of building the business from scratch and his grand plan to become a global brand. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Founded in central Indiana, Marsh Supermarkets Inc. at its peak operated well over 100 stores, with a critical mass in the nine-county Indianapolis metro area. In 2017—11 years after a private equity firm took ownership—just 63 stores remained. Marsh declared bankruptcy in May 2017. From those 63 stores, Marsh closed the majority and sold 26 to Kroger and Needlers. That left a lot of cavernous retail real estate on the market in the Indianapolis area, often occupying sites in shopping centers reserved for huge anchor tenants. But today you’d be hard-pressed to find more than a few vacant Marshes in the nine-county area. The vast majority are accounted for with new tenants or entirely new developments. And the range of solutions found for these sites is breathtaking. One Marsh became a preschool. Another became a church. A pickleball palace. A trampoline park. A headquarters for an IndyCar team. At least a couple spaces were split in two, making room for more specialized grocery stores. After hearing news last week about the site of a former Beech Grove Marsh being redeveloped for a plumbing trade school, IBJ Podcast host Mason King called longtime local retail real estate broker Bill French. After 41 years, French has seen it all, and he has kept detailed records on how former Marsh spaces have been recast, revamped or replaced. Consider this week’s edition of the podcast a tour, as French explains the unique challenges of remaking a signature supermarket space. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Amy Brown is the founder and CEO of Indianapolis-based Authenticx Inc., one of the hottest technology firms the state. Despite the national slowdown in venture capital funding in 2022, Authenticx raised $20 million just before the end of the year. That’s almost $30 million total since Brown founded the firm in 2018, which speaks to investor confidence in the idea behind Authenticx as well as the management team’s level of experience and ability to execute. But Brown took a very unusual route to becoming a first-time entrepreneur in her early 40s. As an undergrad at Indiana University, she earned a bachelor’s degree in human development and family studies. She then earned a master’s of social work in policy and program administration. She had several jobs with a focus on health care policy and health insurance programs. Before deciding to take the leap to create Autheticx, she was the chief operating office for a Carmel-based travel insurance firm. It was there that the idea for Authenticx took shape: A company that could collect all of the feedback that health care companies get from their clients and suss out major weaknesses in the customer experience. The health care companies, such as pharmaceutical firms, insurers or medical care providers, could then use all of the data about their customers and their concerns to improve the bottom line. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Brown discusses what it took to bootstrap Authenticx and get it off the ground, including her desire to inspire her four children. She also sheds light on the experience of persuading venture capitalists to invest in Authenticx, including one distinction in her presentations that she said was invaluable. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Celebrated jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery was born 100 years ago in Indianapolis and spent much of his career here, recording and performing on Indiana Avenue, sometimes with his brothers and often with some of the greatest jazz, soul and even pop musicians of his generation. Montgomery died in 1968 at just 45 years old. But during his relatively short career, he won two Grammy Awards and was routinely selected as the top guitarist in Down Beat magazine polls, five times by critics in the 1960s and four times by readers. We’re turning today’s episode of the podcast over to IBJ arts writer Dave Lindquist for an exploration of the ways that Wes Montgomery was an innovator of jazz guitar, why fellow guitarists continue to find inspiration in his playing 55 years after his death and how he was one of many world-class musicians to emerge from the Indiana Avenue jazz scene in the 1940s and ’50s. Joining Dave for the conversation are Rob Dixon, a saxophone player and artistic director of the Indianapolis Jazz Foundation. And Lasana Kazembe, a poet, teaching artist and assistant professor of education at IUPUI. Rob and Lasana will celebrate Montgomery’s legacy during a May 13 special event at The Cabaret, where Kazembe serves as the venue’s first artist in residence. The event is titled “In Our Own Sweet Way: Honoring the Artistic Legacy of Wes Montgomery.”   The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

David Becker is considered one of the godfathers of the Indiana technology ecosystem, having started and sold several tech firms over the past four decades. But he’s probably best known for his current effort, which broke new ground in an entire tech sector. In 1999, he launched First Internet Bank of Indiana, an online-only bank that offered typical bank services without needing to maintain any physical branches. First Internet Bank recently passed $4 billion in assets. Becker is 69 years old and says he has no plans to hand over the reins of CEO and chairman, given that developing new products and services for the bank scratches his entrepreneurial itch. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Becker has a wide-ranging conversation with host Mason King, jumping from his motorcycle-trip bucket list to what he’s done to make the bank’s new headquarters in Fishers attractive to employees while the corporate world wrangles with the trend of working from home. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

Tom Wood Automotive Group is one of the best-known family businesses in central Indiana, with more than a dozen car dealerships and 1,000 employees. But relatively few people have heard of Jeff Wood, who took over the company after Tom Wood, his father, died from lung cancer in 2010. Jeff Wood grew up in central Indiana and worked in the family business for a while, but he found his calling in the United States Air Force. He served for 20 years as a combat pilot who flew F-16s. As nerve-wracking as it might be to fly an armed aircraft at 1,400 miles per hour at an altitude of 40,000 feet, Jeff Wood wasn’t entirely prepared for the white-knuckle ride of taking over a huge family business at the request of his father. It's been more than a dozen years since Jeff Wood became company president, and he has used that time to diversify Tom Wood Automotive Group—often following his own interests to see where they lead. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, he discusses his dad, flying F-16s and the hair-raising transition to company leader in 2010. It’s been a tough year for the car sales industry, and Wood provides an insider’s look and a sense of how the group is trying to ride out the turbulence. And he provides a 30,000-foot view of this sprawling conglomerate and how he has been able to keep aviation in his life—flying as often as once per week. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

On Wednesday, global tech giant Salesforce revealed in a sparse regulatory filing that it planned to lay off about 10% of its employees companywide. The reason, in a nutshell: Salesforce hired too many people during a recent period of massive growth, and customers now are cutting back on spending in the uncertain economic environment. And speaking of uncertainty, cities with a significant Salesforce presence were left with many questions, since the firm declined to provide any more details about the layoffs than what was in the filing. The company has about 80,000 employees worldwide, about 2,300 of which work in Indianapolis, where its operations are based in the 48-story Salesforce Tower. Although the company is about as high-profile as you can get in Indianapolis, one suspects many local folks are only vaguely familiar with what the company does here and why it’s an important part of the technology ecosystem. For this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, host Mason King and reporters Susan Orr and Mickey Shuey discuss what they’ve learned so far about the restructuring. It's not just a tech story: Salesforce has revealed, somewhat cryptically, that it also plans to shrink its real estate footprint, which could have serious ramifications for Indianapolis’ premier office tower. It all sounds ominous for downtown, which is still trying to recover from the effects of the pandemic on its urban workforce. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

IBJ reporter Dave Lindquist, in this week for Mason King, talks with Emmis Corp. founder Jeff Smulyan about his 2022 memoir “Never Ride a Roller Coaster Upside Down: The Ups, Downs and Reinvention of an Entrepreneur” The book—which he wrote at his daughter’s urging—caps a year of tremendous transition for Smulyan, whose roster of former employees includes David Letterman, Mike Pence, Isaac Hayes and Ken Griffey Jr. Emmis sold four Indianapolis radio stations and Indianapolis Monthly magazine in 2022, ending the company’s four-decade run as a media powerhouse. Although Emmis still owns two radio stations in New York City, the company is now focused on three assets it has in the fields of e-commerce, ergonomics and corporate podcasting. Lindquist talks with Smulyan about his career, his successes and some of his initiatives that didn’t go so well, including NextRadio—a costly effort to make mobile phones act like smart portable radios that never took off. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.    

Given what we know about inflation and the chances for a recession, you could assume this isn’t the best time to start a business that depends on consumer discretionary spending. Shari Jenkins isn’t too concerned. She’s the restauranteur behind the Zionsville mainstays Noah Grant’s Grill House & Oyster Bar and Salty Cowboy Tequileria. She’s now in the process of opening a new restaurant in Zionsville that’s designed to make patrons feel like they’re on vacation and don’t have a care in the world. It’s called Tipsy Mermaid Conch House & Cocktails, and getting it open this spring will require a seven-figure startup investment. Jenkins has faith in her customer base in her native city of Zionsville. Their support helped keep Noah Grant’s going during the Great Recession, and patrons remained loyal to both of her restaurants during the worst of the pandemic. Jenkins also overcame a devastating fire at the original Noah Grant’s during a key period in which she was relocating the restaurant to a new spot in Zionsville. Fears of a mild recession don’t give her much pause. IBJ reporter Daniel Bradley featured the plans for Tipsy Mermaid in the latest issue of IBJ, and Jenkins joined IBJ Podcast host Mason King for a deeper conversation about her emergence as a restauranteur after working as a teacher in Indianapolis Public Schools. She also explains how she surmounted a litany of obstacles over the last 14 years, although elevated food costs continue to be a problem. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

This is the time of year, for better or worse, that we usually take stock of our investments and either count our blessings or lick our wounds. Sad to say, there hasn’t been a year when traditional equity investments—aka the stock market—have behaved this poorly since 2008, and we all know what happened there. Of course, 2022 can’t compare to the financial meltdown and Great Recession, but that doesn’t take any of the sting out of seeing your portfolio slip 20 percent into the red. IBJ personal finance columnist Pete the Planner is in the same boat and isn’t looking forward to his annual financial review on New Year’s Eve, but Pete does have a pocket full of silver linings to pull out. Markets go down and then they go up. It’s a healthy cycle. To benefit from the cycle, you need to make sure that you are taking advantage of opportunities to save money and eliminate. In the podcast this week, Pete shares the questions he asks himself at the end of every year to make sure he’s positioning himself for success. It all boils down to a concept Pete calls the “power percentage,” which he will explain. And he also ventures to make a few optimistic predictions for 2023.   The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

No one disputes that Indiana residents rank very low among all Americans in terms of their health. The operative question, which will be posed to Indiana legislators in their budget-writing session beginning next month, is to what extent the state should try to intervene and do something about it. Last year, Gov. Eric Holcomb convened a special commission to conduct the first comprehensive assessment of Indiana’s public health system in more than three decades. It was co-chaired by former state senator Luke Kenley, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee from 2009 to 2017 and one of the most powerful holders of state purse strings for many years. This summer, the commission released its findings and recommendations. Its overarching proposal is that the state increase annual public health funding from about $55 per person—which ranks 48th in terms of state funding per capita in the nation—to $91 per person. That would cost another $242.6 million a year. Kenley’s job now is to convince skeptical state legislators that this added expenditure is worth it. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Kenley discusses his strategy, as well as why the state’s public health spending has been so relatively meager up to this point. And he’s joined by Dr. Kristina Box, Indiana state health commissioner, to discuss the need to improve the health of Hoosiers and how best to deploy the proposed annual injection of $242.6 million. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

The U.S. airline industry isn’t just short of the pilots needed to meet travel demand. The demographic makeup of the industry’s pilot workforce remains overwhelmingly male and white. Indianapolis-based Republic Airways, one of the largest regional airlines in America, has a vested interest in trying to stock its talent pipeline—not just with pilots but for other aviation careers as well, including maintenance. And Republic has made a concerted effort in recent years to recruit more women and people of color and to eliminate barriers that might stand in the way of successful careers at the company. The airline’s initiatives include a three-day aviation career summit that in October attracted 1,100 attendees—including 750 students of color—from across the state. Republic is also in in the process of launching a campaign to raise $24 million to help 300 central Indiana students of color start careers in aviation. For this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, host Mason King is joined by Rob Lowe, Republic’s vice president of people and culture, and Alisha Spires, senior manager of talent acquisition for pilot recruiting, to discuss the barriers that women and people of color face when they consider aviation careers, and what Republic is doing to widen those horizons.   The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

It’s time to unpack the latest developments in Mayor Joe Hogsett’s plan to establish a Major League Soccer team in downtown Indianapolis. Among other things, the team needs a stadium to play in. The city earmarked about 16 acres in the southeast quadrant of the Mile Square and held discussions with MLS officials. We were left with a cliffhanger: Can the city get state approval for the taxing district that would help pay for the stadium?  That’s where we’ll kick off this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, but we’re going to cover much more ground in this sector of the Mile Square. That includes the newly announced, $78 million practice and training facility for the Indiana Fever, which will be developed less than a soccer pitch away from the prospective stadium site. In the other direction, the Fever facility will be catercorner to the campus containing Commission Row, Bicentennial Unity Plaza and Gainbridge Fieldhouse, the home of the Fever and the Indiana Pacers. A block to the west of Gainbridge is the future site of a $312 million development that will include a high-end hotel and a 4,000-seat concert venue. The next step in the development process for that project has already begun. What do many of these latest developments in the southeast quadrant of the Mile Square have in common? Real estate developer Herb Simon and his family, who own a majority stake in the Indiana Pacers and Indiana Fever. In this week’s edition of the podcast, IBJ reporter Mickey Shuey walks us through all of the latest developments—or in some cases the lack of obvious progress—in this burgeoning sports, entertainment and hospitality sector of downtown. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

The convention and events business that downtown Indianapolis has worked so hard to develop over recent decades has recovered fairly well from the worst days of the pandemic. But there’s a new competitor on the horizon. Nashville, Tennessee—a fellow NFL city that also has positioned its downtown for tourism—is on the brink of building a new football stadium downtown with a covered roof. As we know in Indianapolis, a stadium with a roof gives your city a lot more flexibility in attracting and staging major events—for sports, concerts and conventions. And Nashville officials have been clear that they’ll be going after events that Indianapolis currently hosts or traditionally is in the hunt to host. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, reporter IBJ’s Mickey Shuey tries to gauge the potential impact on Indianapolis of having a tougher competitor for some of the city’s bread-and-butter business. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Although the White House isn’t up for grabs during the U.S. midterm elections on Tuesday, there are candidates for federal, state and local positions on the ballot that affect central Indiana residents in any number of ways. U.S. Sen. Todd Young, a Republican, is defending his seat from Tom McDermott, the Democratic mayor of Hammond, and Libertarian candidate James Sceniak, a behavioral therapist. Some polls have shown the race between Young and McDermott to be surprisingly close, given Young’s name recognition and massive advantage in fundraising. On the state level, there’s a headline-grabbing contest between Republican Diego Morales and Democrat Destiny Wells for secretary of state. Morales has been hit by several troubling allegations in recent months, including accusations of sexual misconduct and embellishing his military record. There’s a fascinating race shaping up in Indiana Senate District 31, which includes the Geist area, Lawrence and the city of Fishers. The incumbent, Republican Kyle Walker, has outraised Democrat opponent Jocelyn Vare many times over, but at least one poll shows this race as a toss-up. And in Indianapolis, Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears, a Democrat, faces a tough challenge from Republican Cyndi Carrasco. She claims Mears has been soft on violent criminals and she has raised an impressive amount of money to get her message out. For this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, host Mason King is joined by two colleagues from the IBJ newsroom to dig deeper into the four races: Peter Blanchard, who covers politics and state government, and Greg Weaver, IBJ’s government and politics editor. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

The guest for this week’s IBJ Podcast is Ben Lytle, whom longtime residents will remember as the former CEO of Indianapolis-based health insurer Anthem. He captained the strategy that turned Anthem into one of the largest health insurers in the nation and a publicly traded firm on the New York Stock Exchange. He also founded, took public and sold the insurance brokerage Accordia. But don’t think of Lytle as a career corporate guy. He started his career as an expert in technology and information systems. He’s an entrepreneur at heart and in recent years has co-founded two companies with his son Hugh—both related to health care. But he’s not interested in talking about the past. He wants to discuss the next 30 years, a period he expects to be filled with mind-boggling changes in the ways we work and live. The pace of life will continue to accelerate and become more turbulent. He says institutions such as government, education, religion, news media and corporate America will be disrupted and become less reliable. So he has written a book titled “The Potentialist: Your Future in the New Reality of the Next 30 Years.” Its purpose is to help us—and especially people at the beginning of their careers—develop the skills and mindset necessary to succeed in that environment. He joined podcast host Mason King to discuss the book and how we can thrive alongside incredible change as we live longer, work longer and develop more intimate relationships with technology. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

IBJ columnist and frequent IBJ Podcast guest Pete “The Planner” Dunn had a piece in the Oct. 14 issue with an uncharacteristically sharp rebuke for a reader who was woefully uninsured. IBJ Podcast host Mason King took it to heart, because he has long avoided getting life insurance, despite being in his 50s, married and the father of a 6-year-old. But he is far from alone in wanting to avoid acknowledging the need to plan for one’s own demise. Dunn’s take is that life insurance is the foundation of good financial planning, as well as being a good spouse and parent. In the latest edition of the IBJ Podcast, King and Dunn dive into some the big questions that usually come up when one finally addresses this dark elephant in the room, including how much life insurance is necessary. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Three of IndyCar’s most prominent teams—Andretti Autosport, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and Arrow McLaren SP—are investing a total of $250 million to expand their operations and add as many as 750 jobs in central Indiana. In this week’s podcast, IBJ reporter Mickey Shuey takes on hosting duties and talks with IndyCar President Jay Frye and Rahal Letterman Lanigan co-owner Bobby Rahal about why teams are investing now and what it says about the state of racing globally and in the Indianapolis area. But Shuey starts by talking with IBJ reporter Daniel Bradley to get the details about the teams’ expansions, which are taking place in the suburbs north of Indianapolis that he covers. For more, read the story Shuey and Bradley wrote about IndyCar investments for the Oct. 14 issue of IBJ. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Recent studies from across the country have helped solidify the link between housing instability—for example, substandard conditions, homelessness or needing to move regularly—and poor infant health. In a pilot program based in Ohio called Healthy Beginnings at Home, organizers wanted to test the impact of providing pregnant women struggling to find stable homes with rental assistance and other services to secure their housing situations. In the group of mothers in the pilot program, there were no infant deaths, and there were more full-term healthy births than in a control group. The pilot group also saw shorter stays in neo-natal intensive care and a reduced need for emergency health care.   The Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health at IUPUI has received a five-year, $2.4 million federal grant to launch an initiative to reduce Indianapolis’ infant mortality rate. And it specifically will address housing instability. Called the Housing Equity for Infant Health Initiative, the program will provide support for pregnant women and mothers with infants under 1 year old. The organizers then will evaluate the program’s impact on birth outcomes and health care costs. CareSource, a not-for-profit that provides health care insurance coverage through public programs including Medicaid and Medicare, was a key participant in the Ohio-based pilot of Healthy Beginnings at Home. It is also a key player in bringing Healthy Beginnings at Home to this Initiative in Indianapolis. A second major piece of the initiative is focused on health justice. Led by the Indiana Justice Project, it will combine legal education, direct legal services, strategic litigation, and advocacy to improve both housing stability and housing conditions for pregnant Hoosiers. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, host Mason King digs into the details with two guests: Dr. Cameual Wright, an OBGYN and vice president and market chief medical officer with CareSource; and Jack E. Turman Jr. He’s the director of the Housing Equity for Infant Health Initiative and the Grassroots Maternal and Child Health Initiative, as well as a professor in the Fairbanks School of Public Health. They cover the link between unstable housing and poor infant health, the difficulty in quantifying the extent of the problem, and the hope that the initiative will lead to larger efforts across the state. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

In just two years, the arts and culture startup known as Gang Gang has become one of the most influential and active producers of events in Indianapolis, promoting the creative economy and the concept of equity. The founders are Malina Simone Jeffers and Alan Bacon, working from the precept that creative people of color continue to be underrepresented and underrecognized for their contributions to culture. GangGang means to change that. The group wants to bring these artists to the forefront, but everyone is welcome to collaborate. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, guest host Dave Lindquist asks Jeffers and Bacon about the impact of “We. The Culture: Works by the Eighteen Art Collective,” a ground-breaking exhibit curated by GangGang that debuted last month at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. They discuss Butter 2, the second edition of GangGang’s fine art festival featuring work by Black visual artists. They also touch on the blueprint that GangGang is creating for stimulating the creative economy, why the group is trying to raise $500,000 by the end of the year, and what they foresee for GangGang over the next five years.   The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

To the extent Butler University has become a known quantity at the national level, we can thank its basketball program. Since 2006, the Bulldogs have earned seeds in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament 10 times, including reaching the national championship final twice. That 16-year period also coincides with the tenure of Barry Collier as Butler’s athletic director. He didn’t need an introduction to Bulldog fans when he was hired for the job, since he had coached the basketball team from 1989 to 2000, earning three NCAA tournament appearances. During that stretch, he was Horizon League Coach of the Year four times. Over the past 16 years, Collier also has presided over an aggressive push into higher levels of competition, jumping from the Horizon League to the Atlantic 10 in 2012, and then to the Big East in 2013. Since then, Butler has invested tens of millions of dollars in renovating or building athletic facilities for a broad range of sports, with the cost largely picked up by donors. And in fact, Collier has enjoyed particular success since 2006 increasing the number of donors and the amounts they give to Butler athletics. In the latest edition of the IBJ Podcast, host Mason King asks Collier, now 68, whether he plans to retire soon. That leads o a conversation about long-term goals, his success in fundraising and improving Butler athletic facilities, and Butler’s transition to the Big East. He looks to the past, including what he learned from Butler coaching legend Tony Hinkle, and to the future and his expectations for Butler basketball this year with the return of Thad Matta as head coach. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

In 2013, the Indiana Legislature created a path for artisan distillers to produce and sell spirits to the public by the glass, bottle or case. The hope was to start a micro-distilling industry in Indiana, and one of the first businesses to take the leap was called Hotel Tango Distillery. It was co-founded by husband-and-wife attorneys Travis and Hilary Barnes. With the help of a handful of investors, they opened a production facility and tasting room in an early 20th century carriage house in the Fletcher Place neighborhood. In eight years, it has grown to three tasting rooms in Indiana and retail sales in 25 states and on 120 military bases around the world. For 2022, Travis Barnes expects total sales of about $6 million. Travis is a former Marine who served in the elite special operations Reconnaissance force. He enlisted right after 9/11, and it turned out to be a life-changing experience, going well beyond the serious injuries he suffered in Iraq. A lot of what he learned in the military is encoded in the values and processes of Hotel Tango. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, he discusses Hotel Tango’s creation, its rocketing sales and how one of the state’s first micro-distilleries could establish such a big footprint in less than a decade. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Indianapolis leaders have pleaded with state lawmakers for decades to change the state’s formula for funding local roads, which they say shows favoritism to rural counties with sparse traffic. When the state determines how much funding to pass along, it counts streets, roads and thoroughfares by their length. So, for example, a one-mile stretch of a two-lane road in rural Parke County would carry the same weight as a one-mile stretch of the six-lane Keystone Avenue on the north side of Indianapolis. City officials would prefer the funding formula place greater importance on traffic volume and an area’s population. But there’s new hope leaders in the Indianapolis area can persuade Indiana lawmakers to make some changes. Suburban mayors in cities like Carmel, Fishers and Greenwood are becoming acutely aware that that the state’s funding mechanisms put their municipalities at a disadvantage. The cities are banding together in hopes their collective voice will be heard during next year’s General Assembly. In a conversation with IBJ Podcast host Mason King, IBJ reporter Peter Blanchard discusses the state formula and the potential that legislators would be receptive to funding charges.  

The official release date of this episode is Jan. 20, which not coincidentally is Inauguration Day. President Trump will outline his vision for second term, but we already have a sense of what to expect in terms of economic policy. Four of the biggest themes are prioritizing tax cuts, decreasing regulation in several major industries, increasing tariffs on imported goods from trading partners Mexico, Canada and China, and cracking down on illegal immigration. And in fact, podcast host Mason King discussed a few of these in an episode after the election in November with IBJ finance columnist Pete Dunn. What’s interesting is how quickly some of Pete’s predictions have come true in just two months. At the same, some of the market-moving elements of the economy have shifted enough in two months that Pete is open to a second look. And then there’s the event with huge economic implications that few could have predicted: the devastating wildfires that have wiped out parts of Los Angeles and its immediate environs. So Pete is back this week to discuss what we can expect to see in at least the next year or two in a free-wheeling conversation hitting rising inflation, stubbornly high costs for consumer goods, the meandering stock market, mass deportations and what could be the biggest economic story of 2025—the impact of the LA fires on the housing industry. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

The Indiana Fever just endured its worst season since joining the WNBA in 2000. On Aug. 14, it finished the season on an 18-game losing streak, posting a record of 5-31. The Fever won the WNBA title 10 years ago, but the team hasn’t made the playoffs since 2016. It also hopes to see a major turnaround in attendance. Due to ongoing renovations at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, the team hosted home games in three arenas last season, and its average home crowd fell to about 1,800 fans. That’s roughly a quarter of what it drew in the mid-2010s. In 2019, Allison Barber was named president and chief operating officer of the Fever, which already was in rebuild mode. Since then, the team has won roughly a quarter of its games. Barber has an impressive resume that includes significant communications and community relations positions at the American Red Cross, White House and Department of Defense. Prior to joining the Fever, she was chancellor of Western Governors University Indiana. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, host Mason King asks Barber why progress on the court has been so slow in coming. And Barber shares her take on the 2022 season, the franchise’s new rebuild strategy, her top priorities in the off-season and the challenges of leading an organization mired in a rough transition. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

We want our kids to learn how money and personal finances work at a fairly early age so they learn how to make smart decisions. IBJ happens to have a good resource for this bit of childhood development: personal finance columnist Pete Dunn, aka Pete the Planner. He has two kids, ages 10 and 13, and has spent several years trying to imprint them with economic wisdom. IBJ Podcast host Mason King has a 6-year-old with a keen interest in money, so he has turned to Pete for his advice in this week’s edition of the podcast. There are two kinds of advice here. There is the practical, mechanical side of money: yeaching your kids how to make money, how to save it, how to spend it, how to invest it and how to earn interest. Pete has been guiding his daughter through hands-on experiences with money since at least the age of 7, as she buys shares of stock, starts internet businesses and helps pay the family’s mortgage every month. The other kind of advice is more about values. How should you handle debt? How much should you rely on your family for financial help? Is becoming rich, by itself, a worthwhile goal? Is the experience of a teen working a regular job more or less valuable than trying to burnish a college resume with sports and academics? In the end, a lot of this advice is just as appropriate for adults. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

Monument Circle is the heart of Indianapolis—and has been since the town of Indianapolis was platted in 1821. Unfortunately, the Circle is subject to the same wear and tear as any street. In the 1970s, its surface—both the street and the adjacent sidewalks—were replaced by red bricks. As a nod to the Circle’s historic status, bricks are terrific. But those bricks must continually be replaced, which is a constant challenge for the city. More recently, it has become evident that the very foundation of the Circle below those bricks needs to be replaced. What’s more—the conventional wisdom for more than a decade has been that we could do more to make the Circle more attractive, more pedestrian-friendly and more conducive to public gatherings. In 2014, the Ballard administration plotted a complete rebuild of the streets and sidewalks of Monument Circle and its four main spokes on Meridian and Market streets. The cost—$54 million—was prohibitive. The city has since embarked on similar projects along East and West Market Streets, which officials hope can serve as a kind of proof of concept for a Monument Circle redo. The Hogsett administration has dusted off the Ballard plan and is strategizing how to turn it into reality. It very likely will require a mix of city, state and federal funds, plus perhaps some philanthropic assistance, to the tune of $60 million. A circle seems like a simple shape, but this is a very complex puzzle for city officials. For this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Dan Parker, director of the Indianapolis Department of Public Works, talks with host Mason King about the direction the city is taking and what roadblocks could be in the way.   The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

It’s no small achievement that Gwendolyn Rogers correctly predicted that Hoosiers would pay a pretty penny for high-end baked goods in an environment right out of “Cinderella.” In 2014, she opened The Cake Bake Shop in Broad Ripple, transforming a free-standing home on the north side of the village into a kind of confectioner’s paradise, populated with sparking accents and a cozy but high-end aesthetic. It offered regular table service, topped off with towering and indulgent cakes—including the deluxe chocolate cake she used to win the London Cake & Bake Show in 2013. In 2019, she opened a second Cake Bake Shop in Carmel. And in April of this year she announced that a longtime dream of hers had come true: The Walt Disney World Resort revealed that a Cake Bake Shop would open next year at Disney’s BoardWalk. But there’s a lot more to the Cake Bake story than the new location. Rogers has put a lot on the line over the last eight years to establish and grow the brand, including a hefty financial commitment. She was saved during the pandemic by a relationship with Williams Sonoma that made her cakes available on the high-end retailer’s website. In eight years, she has gone from a single employee to nearly 190. But as she tells host Mason King in this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, she dreamed of opening in Disney World even before launching the Broad Ripple store.   The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

Chuck Lofton was hired as a weather forecaster and anchor for WTHR Channel 13’s “Sunrise” morning show when it debuted in 1985. He since has survived any number of severe weather events, including tracking tornados, as well as the notoriously fickle TV news business. But in March, he had a big health scare, followed by triple-bypass heart surgery and a two-month recovery off the air. At 65, he would seem to be a prime candidate for winding up his career and taking it easy. But in some ways, he is healthier now than he was five years ago, and he’s enjoying the work more as well. At one point he assumed that 65 would be the end of his career, but now his attitude is much more open-ended. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, Lofton chats with host Mason King about his longevity in the TV news business; the offers he’s had—but not taken—to move up from the Indianapolis market; the close shaves he has experienced in the field; and whether there is room on local TV news to talk about the politically charged topic of climate change.   The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

Tony Dzwonar had just wrapped up three consecutive terms on the Washington Township school board—serving from 2008 to late 2020—and was looking for a way to spend his extra free time. He remembered that the district –like most school corporations—needed bus drivers. He received the required training and a commercial driver’s license before becoming one of about 100 district bus drivers in fall 2021. He worked daily, running two or three routes in the southeastern portion of the district that included elementary children, middle schoolers and high school students. In the latest edition of the IBJ Podcast, Dzwonar tells host Mason King about what he learned waking up at 5 a.m. every school day and getting behind the wheel of a 40-foot bus. He explains how he dealt with his most disruptive students as a newbie driver. He also shares his new street-level perspective of the district and how it gave him insight into the impact of at least one of the school board’s student-focused initiatives. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

IBJ Media last week released its inaugural Indiana 250, a list of the most influential and impactful business and community leaders in Indiana. The list — researched and developed by IBJ, Indiana Lawyer and Inside INdiana Business — includes CEOs, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, attorneys, economic development officials and more from across the state. Host Mason King talks with IBJ Media CEO Nate Feltman and IBJ Editor Lesley Weidenbener, who oversaw production of the Indiana 250, about the goal of the program and the challenge of choosing the honorees. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

Lawmakers are preparing to return to the Statehouse next week for a special session that will focus on two key issues: abortion and how to spend some of the state’s $6.1 billion the state has in reserves. That's right—$6.1 billion. That huge balance in the state's reserve accounts is the result of higher than expected tax receipts as well as pandemic relief money the federal government sent to the state. Gov. Eric Holcomb wants lawmakers to send some of that money back to Hoosiers in the form of $225 tax refund checks. In this week's podcast, IBJ Editor Lesley Weidenbener—in for vacationing host Mason King—talks about the upcoming session with Peter Blanchard, IBJ’s new Statehouse reporter, and managing editor Greg Weaver, who has spent much of his career writing about and editor reporters who cover politics. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

Americans are back in the throes of financial anxiety. Folks with most of their savings in the stock market have been in the profoundly uncomfortable position of watching their portfolios lose 20% to 25% of their value since the beginning of the year. Gas is still near its all-time high and is continuing to play a major factor in skyrocketing inflation. And most experts agree that if we’re not already in a recession, there’s still a very good chance we’ll get stuck in one soon. IBJ Podcast host Mason King calls on frequent guest Peter Dunn—aka Pete The Planner—to give listeners a pep talk, or at least some straight talk about what’s happening and what to expect. He hits the major topics from inflation to recession, as well as the strategies for riding out the latest fiscal downturn such as gas-tax holidays and Fed rate increases. To be frank, Pete’s major takeaway is a return to frugality. And be ready for more anxiety this fall, when we really start to feel the restrictions of recession. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.  

IBJ reporter Mickey Shuey broke the story last month that Indy Eleven majority owner Ersal Ozdemir has purchased the Diamond Chain industrial site downtown to be home to Eleven Park, a mixed-use development that is to include a 20,000-seat soccer stadium. Shuey joins the IBJ Podcast this week to discuss the Diamond Chain site, which is located at the corner of South and West streets downtown, and what sorts of surprises it might hold for the development.  Of course, there's the usual concerns about environmental impacts that come with any industrial site. But this particular spot was also the city's first burial ground. Shuey and podcast host Mason King dive into the details. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.    

After five years leading apartment development for Indianapolis-based real estate firm Birge & Held, Jarod Brown decided he wanted a business with his name on the door. So he struck out on his own in late 2022 and soon hung his shingle for Brown Capital Group on an historic building in Broad Ripple. As a developer, he hit the ground running with an impressive set of established relationships and a strong track record in central Indiana. He currently is working on several major apartment projects in various stages of development in the Indy area, including The Grounds, a 236-unit project at 22nd and Central; The Row, a three-building complex by the Monon Trail at 22nd Street; Rosedale Hills Apartments, a 132-unit project on the south side of Indianapolis; and The Grove, a 188-unit complex in Whitestown. For his firm’s headquarters, Brown bought the former Broad Ripple Library building at 6219 Guilford Ave. The 76-year-old building is currently under renovation for BCG’s offices, as well as for co-working space the firm plans to offer. Interviewing Brown in the old children’s reading room, IBJ Podcast host Mason King took this opportunity to learn more about a bread-and-butter element of IBJ’s news coverage: real estate development. Brown gives an insider’s view of the most important elements of his strategy, the vital task that dominates his time, and the whole process of creating apartment projects from identifying desirable land to swinging open the doors to tenants. And Brown sees his headquarters as an investment in the future of Broad Ripple Village, which he believes has its best years ahead of it. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

Ryan Vaughn has spent the past eight years leading the Indiana Sports Corp., a job that requires constant work attracting big sports events to the city and then pulling them off once they arrive. The goal is to always have a pipeline of events coming to help bolster the region's tourism industry and economy overall. IBJ reporter Mickey Shuey (in for vacationing host Mason King) talks with Vaughn about what he's learned during his time in the post and why he's leaving to take a job in the tech sector. Plus, Shuey presses Vaughn about the challenge the next Indiana Sports Corp. president will face—and whether Vaughn might someday run for mayor. The IBJ Podcast is brought to you by Taft.

The city has endorsed a $175 million proposal from two Indianapolis-based developers to significantly recast the entire block that contains the Indianapolis City Market. The proposal from Gershman Partners and Citimark included the following: A $90 million redevelopment of the Gold Building (which is the 9thlargest office complex downtown) into an apartment building with 350 units and an entirely new façade with a darker, more neutral color. Next up: Construction of a $40 million, 11-story apartment building with 60 units, plus office and retail space, on the site where the market’s east wing currently sits. Next, $30 million in ongoing improvements to the 11-story office building at 251 E. Ohio, and $12 million in improvements to the parking garage that’s between 251 E. Ohio  and the Gold Building, which are all on the northern half of the block. For this week’s edition of the podcast, host Mason king talks with Scarlett Andrews, director of the Indianapolis Department of Metropolitan Development, and Eric Gershman, principal at Gershman Partners, about the project and the timeline.

The amount of venture capital invested into Indiana-based tech companies was down overall in the first quarter of the year—despite several recent announcements. That tracks with national trends, and has local venture firms urging their portfolio companies to think about ways to make their cash last longer. IBJ tech reporter Susan Orr talked with local tech firms and venture funders about the trends and tells host Mason King about their concerns and expectations. But Orr said there’s plenty of optimism about the area’s tech sector. And she offers a reminder that sometime slowdowns help weed out weaker companies while making others stronger. You can read Orr’s story at IBJ.com.