STARTedUP Foundation Names Alli Lindenschmidt Curtis Chief Executive Officer

With a decade of nonprofit expertise, deep Indiana roots, and a clear vision for scale, access, and sustainability, Alli Lindenschmidt Curtis steps into the CEO role as Founder Don Wettrick takes on a purpose-built position designed to amplify STARTedUP's reach.

Indianapolis, Ind. (July 13, 2026) — The STARTedUP Foundation today announced that Alli Lindenschmidt Curtis has been named Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. Don Wettrick, who founded and led the organization since its inception in 2017, transitions to the role of Founder, a position designed around building relationships, amplifying STARTedUP's story, and connecting Indiana's students and teachers to the world's most compelling voices in entrepreneurship and innovation. This is a deliberate expansion of STARTedUP's leadership capacity, not a departure.

Since joining STARTedUP full time in 2021, Curtis has served as the architect behind its most significant period of growth, developing the partnerships, funding models, and programmatic systems that power both the STARTedUP Challenge, STARTedUP's flagship student pitch competition, and the Innovation Accelerator, its educator training program.

"Alli has been with us from the earliest days,” says Wettrick. “Her commitment to this mission, and the relationships she has built with educators across this state, have already made an extraordinary impact on STARTedUP. It is an honor to pass the reins to someone who already knows Indiana, knows our teachers, and knows exactly where we are going."

About Alli Lindenschmidt Curtis

Curtis brings more than a decade of nonprofit and civic experience to the CEO role. She began her career in philanthropy at the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and Ascension St. Vincent Foundation before moving into state government, where she served with the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC), traveled the state and worked alongside legislators and major employers, and helped establish the Indiana Destination Development Corporation. Her career has been defined by a consistent thread: building the systems and relationships that drive long-term impact.

Curtis joined STARTedUP full time in January 2021. As Director of Development, she scaled the STARTedUP Challenge (formerly known as Innovate WithIN) from roughly 100 students annually to the nation's most elite high school pitch competition, now reaching more than 2,500 students each year. She supported the launch of the Innovation Accelerator, which now equips more than 150 Indiana educators annually to bring entrepreneurial thinking into classrooms serving 18,000 students. 

For Curtis, this work has always been personal. Long before her professional career, she watched her late father build a business from the ground up, learning firsthand that entrepreneurship is not simply about building a successful company; it is about building character, resilience, and purpose along the way.

"I had a front-row seat to entrepreneurship before I even knew the word for it," said Curtis. "My dad built his business on faith, quality, and integrity, and watching him taught me that entrepreneurship is not just about what you build. It is about who you become while building it. That is the experience we get to give thousands of students every year, and I have never been more excited about where we are headed."

At the heart of her leadership is a belief that young people, when trusted and challenged, can do extraordinary things. Curtis has dedicated her career to building systems that accelerate the next generation of talent, and STARTedUP is where that mission finds its fullest expression.

A Vision for What's Next

As CEO, Curtis is focused on three priorities: scale, access, and sustainability. On scale, the goal is to deepen STARTedUP's reach across all 92 Indiana counties while expanding the model to educators across the country. STARTedUP has already supported teachers in more than five states, and Curtis intends to grow that footprint significantly, with Indiana remaining the organization's primary proving ground and community. 

On access, STARTedUP's vision is a program that meets every teacher where they are, regardless of subject, location, or where they are in their journey toward teaching the innovation mindset in their classroom. A significant part of that is STARTedUP's new status as a Work-Based Learning (WBL) solution. With WBL now a statewide graduation requirement, STARTedUP can provide students with WBL hours to bring real-world, career-connected learning experiences into classrooms without requiring students to leave their school.

On sustainability, Curtis is building the systems, partnerships, and funding models that will allow STARTedUP's work to outlast any single program cycle. That includes mobilizing the broad community of volunteers, corporate partners, and donors who have long been passionate about supporting quality education, and giving them clear ways to get involved and create lasting impact.

The Founder's Role 

As Founder, Wettrick returns to what originally brought him to this work: building relationships and forming partnerships to expand STARTedUP's capacity and calling. That means being on national stages and at regional events, but it also means being in classrooms, accessible to the teachers and students across Indiana who are at the center of this mission. Over a 20-year teaching career and more than 600 podcast episodes, he built a network that few organizations can access. Now his full-time focus is leveraging it, cultivating corporate sponsors, donors, and strategic partners, and ensuring that every meaningful connection finds its way back to STARTedUP's programming and the people it serves.

Together, this structure gives STARTedUP its strongest position to date: a CEO who has spent years building the relationships, strategies, and funding models that turn vision into measurable impact, and a Founder dedicated to expanding STARTedUP's network and ensuring that every new connection serves the students and teachers at the heart of this work. For the educators, students, funders, and partners who power this mission across Indiana and beyond, the message is clear: STARTedUP is not slowing down. It is just getting started.