Q&A: Steven Emch on building next era of Indiana leaders

Winamac native Steven Emch will take over as president of the Orr Fellowship on Monday, with plans to grow the size of the post-graduate program without losing the culture that has connected its participants with some of the region’s most prominent and fastest-growing companies.

Emch left Indiana as a child and grew up in Arizona. But he returned to the state after marrying “a Butler girl” and went to work at Lessonly, now a division of global tech firm Seismic. Emch moved on to the Indiana Economic Development Corp., where he worked as director of venture development before seeking the post at Orr Fellowship.

Orr fellows spend two years in the program, working for a local company that pays them $51,000 the first year and then whatever the company chooses in the second. During that time, the fellows also participate in Orr programs and help run the organization.

Emch, 28, will be responsible for day-to-day operations of the 22-year-old organization and will direct programming and events.

How did your previous work prepare you to lead the Orr Fellowship?

I was on the innovation and entrepreneurship team, [and] we look at the ecosystem through this lens of people, money and ideas. And so, the state has money, lots of people have money, and there’s generally no shortage of ideas, whether they’re good or bad. But what is difficult is always the people piece. It’s always hard to find good entrepreneurs, good leaders to take on an initiative.

Lessonly was a business built on the community of the people that worked there and the customers—it was way more than just software. And then, I was in the service industry with my family’s [child care] business, too. So, there’s a thread of people that’s been going through my entire career so far.

What attracted you to Orr?

The mission is what’s attracted me to it—developing this next generation of leaders. I know how impactful and trajectory-changing the mentors in my life [have been]. I want to try to set the conditions for that to happen for all of these fellows, to actually maximize their potential.

What are the challenges facing the fellowship right now?

If you look at age groups disproportionately affected by COVID, you’d have older people for health reasons, but then for career reasons, you’d have this specific age group that are coming out of college. They don’t really have a network to speak of. … Early career is usually when you’re building out your network, when you’re going to networking events, going to social activities, etc.

They were functionally robbed of all that for two years. And while I can’t fix it for the classes that are already gone, I’m going to do my best to continue building out that community and culture. And one challenge is scaling that into the long-term connectedness for them.

Also, we want to continue growing class size while not sacrificing the culture [of the program] or the caliber of the fellows that we bring in or the meaningful experiences—and that’s always a challenge.

What are your week-one priorities?

We’re in our recruiting season right now. So, wrapping my head around the entire recruiting process and getting as smart as possible on that is important. But maybe more important for the long term … I have plans to have as many conversations as possible in my first hundred days … to build out context and help to inform my vision for going forward.•