By Chris Hutchinson 

Tech occupations have been major contributors to Indiana’s overall job growth in the past decade. In fact, Indiana has outpaced most states in the growth of its tech sector due to collaborative efforts across the state.  

TechPoint’s 2024 Tech Workforce Report, which updated the state’s progress in Mission41K goals, showed that Indiana’s tech employment grew to 121,600 in 2023, representing the highest level of overall tech employment ever in the state. CompTIA projected 2024 Indiana tech job growth at 2.9 percent.  

“Collaboration is key to inclusively increasing the level of growth so we don’t leave anyone behind,” said TechPoint’s Vice President of Talent, Strategy & Engagement Ginger Lippert. “We are hyper-focused on ensuring our current efforts are as innovative as they can be and supporting other efforts that will get us to the goal of welcoming new people into the tech ecosystem and preparing them for success.”  

Lippert said the listing below isn’t meant to be exhaustive. Instead, it’s meant to alert tech employers to the array of opportunity and to encourage those in the talent development space to develop and share additional approaches.  

“This is not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing,” Lippert said. “We need to showcase all the ways of growing Indiana tech so companies across the state can find – and use – what works most affordably and effectively for them.”  

Among the most recognized efforts are internship programs like TechPoint’s Xtern and the Orr Fellowship, which together have helped attract and retain more than 1,000 young Hoosier tech leaders. Apprenticeships are also gaining traction and attention as sectors like banking and tech have realized the effectiveness of the approach long taken by the building trades.  

But there are plenty of innovative efforts happening at corporate and nonprofit levels where Indiana talent innovators are filling the talent pipeline and finding business success in so doing.  

Fishers-based IONThree, for example, helps companies fill high tech roles like data analytics, software development and engineering creating client-dedicated teams called pods of two to four emerging high-tech workers who are hired and cultivated (overseen, trained and mentored) by IonThree. These specialized teams work for the companies that need the staff and are overseen by an IONThree senior level high-tech leader.  

These ‘podsters’ perform high-volume, low-complexity technical work necessary to run the business, freeing up senior managers and leaders to focus on innovation, strategy and moving the business forward. As the podsters gain experience and work with a company, many are hired on full-time. IonThree would then backfill the positions and keep the team running.   

IONThree Founder Manash Sahoo said his company’s podsters aren’t apprentices per se, but often will be hired by their assigned companies.  

  
The company recently helped one of the country’s largest healthcare provider organizations of registry data collection and analytics team. Those organizations focus on managing and analyzing patient data within clinical registries to improved quality and support research initiatives across different healthcare settings.    

“We started with a pod of three people, but had to continuously backfill it as team members were hired permanently by the client,” Sahoo said. “Over nearly six years, this flexible and collaborative approach allowed the healthcare provider to build a strong, stable team that was capable of handling the complexities of their growing data needs.”  

That long-term success eventually led to the closure of the pod, but Sahoo considers that a win, not a loss.   

“It’s a testament to the success and long-term impact of the Pod Program,” he said.  

The STARTedUP Foundation team, through partnerships and alliances with private sector companies, is working to expand STEM education in rural and underserved areas, ensuring students have access to quality resources and mentorship, bridging the gap between education and real-world applications. The Indianapolis nonprofit has worked with more than 10,000 students in 59 Indiana counties since 2017. Ninety percent of those students choose to stay in Indiana after graduation.  

STARTedUP’s efforts were rewarded last month with the TechPoint Mira Award for Talent Impact.   

“Innovation and talent development don’t just happen in boardrooms and office spaces. They start in classrooms and communities,” said Don Wettrick, CEO of the STARTedUP Foundation. “At STARTedUP, we’re proving that when students are given real opportunities to solve problems, they rise to the challenge. By bridging the gap between education and industry, we’re not only preparing the next generation of tech leaders but ensuring that Indiana remains a place where innovation thrives and talent stays.”    

Tactile Engineering, a finalist for the Mira Talent Impact award, takes aim at helping students with blindness and visual impairments have careers in STEM fields, particularly in engineering and science.  

Tactile’s founder, David Schleppenbach, invented – and with his West Lafayette-based team refined and is marketing – the Cadence tablet. Its significance in addressing educational gaps to the 7 million blind and visually impaired people in the U.S. alone, and Tactile’s focus on getting it to market was part of why Schleppenbach was the 2023 Mira Rising Entrepreneur of the Year.  

The device enables blind users to access combined braille and dot-matrix graphics and to experience high-speed tactile animation. This feature is especially important for STEM education and careers. Complex concepts like molecular motion, aerodynamics, current flow, plate tectonics, and chemical processes can be quickly and efficiently conveyed without the need for volumes of tactile graphics and bulky single-use models. These animation files are easily distributed and edited, meaning that if one teacher makes a new and improved animation of a concept, every student with a Cadence anywhere in the world has instant access to that animation. Any user can make further improvements, drastically increasing the speed at which educational and research materials are refined and quality checked.  

  
The fast response time of the Cadence tablet also enables unprecedented tactile communication. A user in California can start drawing a data graph, and a recipient in New York can instantly feel the shape being drawn and simultaneously join in finishing or adding to the drawing. The Cadence tablet can also be used to interpret and display video feeds from telescopes, microscopes, and other sensory equipment.  

At the Indiana School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Cadence tablets have been provided to students for use as study and lab aids. Younger students use the tablets to efficiently learn braille via interactive activities. Older students use the tablets for graphing mathematical content, viewing images of complex topics (e.g., mitosis, continental drift, chemical reactions), drawing pictures, and gathering real-time data using linked scientific instruments (such as temperature and pH probes).  
   
Adult users at workplaces and colleges have been using Cadence tablets to access vital content such as spreadsheets and data graphics. Notably, a cybersecurity curriculum is in development that provides certifications to students, relying on the Cadence tablet to provide access to quickly updated data and monitoring information. Workplaces can then provide Cadence tablets loaded with the same tools as workplace accommodations.  

“We take these things for granted with vision because we can just see and visualize immediately, but for a huge portion of the population, simply getting access to textbooks or workplace documents is an almost insurmountable challenge. We want to change that, and to do it here in Indiana,” Schleppenbach said. “Our economy has pivoted into a highly technical environment. We’re one of the leaders in automated assembly, we have a really diverse and multitalented workforce, and we have world-class universities. We’ve found that students and graduates are thrilled to work in a field like this because it gives them an opportunity to really build great skill sets and career experience while doing this tremendous social good.” 

Lippert said TechPoint appreciates each of the efforts to inclusively grow Indiana’s tech workforce whether it’s focused on helping people overcome limitations that have traditionally held them back, encouraging young children to explore STEM classes and activities, help early-in-career people gain certifications or tech training, welcome adult workers into second careers or other innovations. 

“We want anyone interested in joining the Indiana tech workforce to easily find and follow the paths that are right for them,” Lippert said. “We’re focused on building and supporting as many paths as are needed.”