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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowOrganizers of Indianapolis’ third annual Rally innovation conference, which takes place Sept. 24-25, have a new resource for planning this year’s event: an 86-member host committee.
Rally was created in 2023 by Indianapolis-based Elevate Ventures, which invests in Indiana companies on behalf of the Indiana Economic Development Corp. The event aims to advance the state’s innovation economy by bringing together innovators, investors, business leaders, academics and thought leaders from Indiana and beyond and from a variety of industry sectors.
Elevate Ventures announced the host committee and its members this week.
Committee co-chairs are Vanessa Sinders, CEO of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce; Seth Morales, CEO of Indianapolis-based staffing agency The Morales Group; and Dave Neff, CEO of the West Lafayette-based Boilermaker Alliance, a nonprofit that helps Purdue University athletes secure compensation deals under the NCAA’s name, image and likeness rule.
Details for this year’s event are still in the works, but in each of the last two years, Rally featured more than 200 speakers; dozens of breakout sessions on topics such as entrepreneurship, software and sports tech; an exhibition area; and five separate pitch contests offering up to $5 million in combined prize money. In each year, the event has drawn about 3,000 attendees from within and outside the U.S.
In forming a host committee, Rally is taking a page from the playbook of the Indiana Sports Corp., which has for years used host committees to help Indianapolis prepare for big events including the 2012 Super Bowl, last year’s NBA All-Star Game and many others.
“It’s about getting the best people, the best minds, in the same place to really provide their input and create something really special—something that really speaks to Indiana as a platform to welcome folks into our fold,” said Muhammad Yasin, a host committee member and the vice president of marketing at Elevate Ventures.
Yasin said Elevate Ventures had always planned to set up a Rally host committee—but the organization wanted to have some experience under its belt before taking that step.
“In the first two years, we were really working out a lot of the structure of the conference itself, how we execute on it,” Yasin said. “We felt, going into year three, we were ready and had something where we could bring in more people to take the reins on many of the areas.”
The IEDC has provided significant financial support for Rally in its first two years, with the idea of making its largest financial commitment in the first year and decreasing their contribution in subsequent years as the event found other sources of funding.
In 2023, the IEDC contributed $1.75 million towards the event’s $2.9 million budget. Last year, the IEDC contributed $1 million towards the event’s $2.5 million budget. Elevate Ventures CEO Christopher Day said this year’s Rally budget, and potential funding from the IEDC, haven’t yet been determined.
The Rally host committee includes seven subcommittees:
- Marketing, led by Innovatemap CEO Mike Reynolds
- Sales, led by InnoPower Indy Inc. CEO Emil Ekiyor
- Media, led by Magley Mass Media Founder Jennifer Magley
- Community and Impact, led by Indy Chamber Chief Financial and Administrative Officer ZeNai Savage
- Event Logistics, led by KM&A Vice President Madelynn Murgas
- Content, led by Vita Nova Strategy founder and CEO Darcy Lee
- Pitch, led by Elevate Ventures Partner Jacob Schpok
A full list of host committee members can be found here.
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