Denver Hutt’s family, friends aim to launch namesake fellowship

Close friends and family members of the late Denver Hutt are gearing up to create a fellowship in her name, one of the first moves aimed at establishing an enduring legacy for the well-known California native who died Saturday after a battle with ovarian cancer.

Tom Hanley

Tom Hanley, Hutt's boyfriend, said the program likely would be called the "Hutt Fellowship." The idea is in the very early stages, he said, but the goal is to fund an internship at The Speak Easy, the co-working and collaborative space for entrepreneurs near Broad Ripple.

Hutt, an ambitious and energetic 28-year-old known for her adeptness at connecting Indianapolis entrepreneurs to people and resources, was The Speak Easy's first executive director from February 2012 to August 2015.

"Our hope and goal of creating an opportunity like this is to engage college students and help them learn what The Speak Easy stands for, which is what Denver stood for," said Hanley, who also is executive director of Nine 13 Sports.

"We want to reinforce community and collaboration and all of those elements that Denver built her living legacy on when she was here."

The group is in the midst of working out the fine details, including when the fellowship program would start and the length of each fellowship. But the group has at least $20,000 on hand to kick things off, money that was raised for Hutt through GoFundMe.

The GoFundMe effort was originally launched Jan. 12, Hanley said, and had raised about $10,000 in the first 24 hours. After Hutt died on Jan. 16, the figure was around $12,000, and her family updated the page to tell donors the money would go toward a foundation in Hutt's name.

Hanley said those GoFundMe donations will be combined with contributions to The Denver Hutt Legacy Fund, a newly established fund that began accepting donations Thursday night at a Hutt memorial event that drew roughly 500 people. It was unclear Friday morning how much the new fund raised.