Ask NWI® | Interviewing NWI's Brightest Minds | Thought-Leaders | Business Owners | Entrepreneurs

Summary Sarah Coulter was working as the senior program manager for the Millennium Reserve when the steering committee gave her the charge to start working on the development of a bi-state nonprofit entity. In January of 2017, Calumet Collaborative was officially started. Now Coulter has projects in four focus areas to address the region’s challenges. There […]

Summary J Ballentine is a mother, wife, entrepreneur, and chef raised by two Italian parents in upstate New York. Food is an important tradition in Italian households, and it laid a strong foundation for founding Pure Cravings. “When we went paleo, I felt tremendously better,” says Ballentine. “I had always struggled with stomach problems my whole...

Summary Rachel Delaney believes it is the mission of every person to make a difference. Born to teenage parents who divorced when she was young, Delaney moved around a lot, but she remembers what animals meant to her when she was a child. She began spending all her free time volunteering at the shelter despite […]

Summary Jennifer McMullin and her mother had spent a few years looking for something they could do as their own business that interested them both. When McMullin fell in love with escape rooms after a visit to her brother, they knew they had found their business. They have only been open for about a year, […]

Summary Jennifer Cosenza does marketing and sales for Level Rite Concrete, which she owns with her husband Joe in Munster. They started their business from scratch after a disappointing experience with getting their own driveway mudjacked, and now they’re all about quality, customer service, and high standards of excellence for leveling uneven concrete. Time-Stamped Show […]

Summary Katie Sannito developed her passion for food from a young age, learning to cook the things that her great-grandfather, a chef, made in his restaurant. To her Italian family, food is everything. She enjoys meeting new people, and has now married her passion of sharing good food experiences with the people she meets to […]

Summary By the time Jim Slavo was a sophomore in high school, his family had moved so often that he’d gone to nine different schools. The result was that he became skilled at communicating and making friends. Just after turning sixteen, Slavo learned that he was going to be a father and knew he had […]

Summary Shortly after getting married, Nick and Andrea Sanchez decided that they needed a business that would allow Andrea to stay home with their future children. They began with an athletic apparel line, but pivoted to become Midwest Prints after noticing that everybody needs t-shirts. Now Midwest Prints has orders lined up months in advance. […]

Summary It took Elizabeth Steel about six months to convince Annette Mckeown to go into business together and they co-found Smalltown Coffee. As Steel always says, “I can do anything I want,” and she eventually said it enough times to convince Mckeown. The two women were living in separate states at the time, so they […]

Summary Chef Kate only opened Green is Good by Kate about four months ago, but she’s been working in restaurants since she was sixteen years old. More recently, she’s catered events, sold food items each week at a local health foods store, and sold in farmer’s markets in Crown Point. It’s been a slow transition […]