Central Indiana: February 2026 Highlights
Innovation In Action
Each month, we celebrate the stories of Innovation Accelerator teachers and students making a difference across Indiana and beyond.
Quick Hits:
Two student leaders at Westfield High School launched a Girls in Business Club, with 25 girls signed up before the first meeting.
A first-year teaching duo at Decatur Central ran a two-day, 16-team pitch competition for 36 seniors, and 93% of students said their presentation skills significantly improved.
Launching a Girls and Business Club
John Moore: Westfield High School
At Westfield High School, the business and innovation programs have a gap, and after talking with teachers across the county, John Moore found the same imbalance showing up everywhere: not enough girls in business. Two students decided to do something about it.
Junior Hope H. and sophomore Liv B. are the founders and leaders of Westfield's brand-new Girls in Business Club. The idea grew out of a conversation between Hope, Liv, and Moore about the underrepresentation they were seeing firsthand. The ultimate goal is to get more girls involved in accounting, entrepreneurship, innovation, and marketing, even if they are not able to take business classes.
"Hope and Liv did an amazing job at seeing this problem as an opportunity," Moore said, "and looking at what we could do to get more girls involved, not necessarily in our classes, but giving them similar experiences."
The club is designed to meet every two weeks, rotating between networking and collaborative problem-solving. Hope and Liv have already lined up women from across Westfield to speak, developed games and case studies for members to work through, and are planning a larger networking event with professional groups in the city.
And this is all before the first official meeting.
Two weeks out from their call-out, 25 girls had already signed up. The energy wasn't staying inside the school walls either. “Not only have they created excitement within the school, but they have created excitement in the community as well," Moore said. “Many women from around the city are asking how they can get involved with our students.“
The long-term vision is bigger than club meetings. Moore wants to see Girls in Business become a genuine pipeline: students ready to lead, networking events that grow year over year, and a real contribution to the economic development of Westfield.
"Westfield is an amazing city, and the women we have are some of the most driven, compassionate leaders in the state," Moore said.
Hope and Liv are just getting started, and it sounds like Westfield is ready for them.
First Year? Full Send!
Kristi Mann & Jodi Ramirez: Decatur Central High School
Kristi Mann and Jodi Ramirez teach English and business together, a combined class that, this year, became something neither of them had done before: a full STARTedUP pitch competition, built from scratch, with 36 seniors and 16 teams.
It was their first go-round. It looked nothing like a first attempt.
Getting Students Out of Their Heads
The hardest part, both teachers agreed, wasn't the pitch day itself. It was the weeks before it, getting students to move past vague, sweeping ideas and dig into a specific problem worth solving.
Kristi and Jodi started tag-teaming every group, meeting with teams daily, asking the same essential question over and over: What is the actual problem?
"Once they caught fire, you could see different groups really taking off," Kristi said.
Students were sent all over the building to find answers. Talk to the computer science teacher. Talk to the FFA advisor. Talk to the cafeteria staff. Talk to your peers. The hallways of Decatur Central became part of the classroom.
"I was glad we had seniors we could trust with that kind of responsibility," Jodi said. "Building that culture of trust and responsibility was important first."
The turning point, Kristi noticed, often came during prototyping. When students could physically see or touch something like a cardboard mockup, a 3D-printed model, or an AI-generated design of their sketch, the idea stopped feeling hypothetical.
One group built a burrito koozie after identifying a problem that had clearly been bothering them for some time: everything falls out of a burrito. They 3D-printed a prototype. Another team tackled potholes with a plant-based regenerative solution, identified the right extract, and built a model of how it could function.
And the top-scoring pitch came from Hudson, a volleyball player who spent years frustrated by how hard it is to find local leagues and sports opportunities across Indiana. He built a platform to solve it, worked with the school's computer science teacher to develop a website mockup, and walked judges through streaming functions and advertising potential. When the principal heard the pitch, who’s daughter plays volleyball, her reaction was immediate: "I need this app now."
The competition ran over two days, with an intentional mix of judges: the principal, another teacher, and a recent graduate now working in aviation. Having an outside panel mattered. "They knew our principal was going to be watching," Jodi said. "It's not just presenting for Miss Mann and me, this is for real."
What Came After
When Kristi and Jodi surveyed students at the end of the competition, 93% said their presentation skills had significantly improved over the semester. That alone would be a win. But what surprised them most was what students chose to do next. Given the option to move on to a new project or keep developing their STARTedUP idea, about 70% said they wanted to keep going.
For a class of seniors with graduation on the horizon, that says something!
Three teams - one building a website for the school's community greenhouse, one developing vegetable wash products for it, and one creating a local discovery app - are already planning to collaborate and take their projects further together. "Even though the competition's over for most of them, we're going to keep working on the projects and taking the next step," Kristi said.
This was Kristi and Jodi's first year running a pitch competition. Next year, they're already thinking bigger, with more outside business partners, more judges, and closer collaboration with neighboring schools.
For a first attempt, they set a high bar. For their students, it turns out that was exactly the point.
