Welcome to “This is Purdue,” the university’s official award winning podcast. I’m Kate Young, your host and a proud Purdue alumna. “This is Purdue” is all about sharing big ideas that spark broad interest and get people talking.

We’re passionate about highlighting notable boilermakers, who are powering innovation and working together to solve today’s toughest challenges. Tune in to each episode as we have engaging conversations with Purdue alumni, faculty, researchers, coaches, and more, who are inspiring change through small steps every day across timely topics like sports, well-being, emerging tech, and life changing research. Join us as we discover how these boilermakers are taking their next giant leap.

This whole concept of best reason to go online is to find a reason to get offline. I think it really acts like a form of permission or an invitation to people. We’re hearing people say like, I don’t want to spend my life online.

My screen time is out of control. I want to get offline. Hobbies are bringing me joy. I’m inspired to try new things.

In this episode of “This is Purdue,” we’re talking to Haley Larsen, story lead of marketing and measurement at Pinterest, a global visual search engine and social media platform where users can discover, save, and share ideas. Haley received her PhD in English from Purdue in 2021, and has a robust background in English literature and culture.

In today’s episode, we’re going to dive into the recent revival of hobbies, how hobbies can boost community building and impact our overall well-being, and how to find the right hobby that fills your cup? Instead of feeling like it’s just another task on to-do list, whether it’s crocheting or sourdough baking, pickleball or astrology or cooking, or popular games like mahjong, or maybe entirely new hobbies and inspirations you haven’t even thought about before.

We’ll be discussing Pinterest’s latest campaign, which centers around the notion of the best thing you can find online is a reason to get offline. Plus, Haley talks about why the younger generations, especially, are eager to dig into hobbies that bring them joy and fulfillment. So let’s get to it. Here’s my conversation with Haley.

Hi, Haley. Thank you so much for joining us on “This is Purdue.” You work for Pinterest. You’re the story lead of marketing and measurement there.

And Pinterest is a global visual search engine and social media platform. And we’re just so excited to dive into the topic. That’s kind of been hot in the news lately. It’s all about hobbies, so no one better to speak to than a boilermaker who works at Pinterest.

Yeah, I am so excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

So there’s been a recent revival, I would say, of hobbies over the past couple years, and we’re shifting away from this hustle culture, and people want to go back to doing things with their hands, putting away their phones. And a CNBC article from early 2026 talked about people going chronically offline and pursuing these analog, in-person hobbies. Why do you think that is?

It’s such a great question, and it’s absolutely a trend that we are seeing. I think we are in a really fascinating moment where the first generation that really grew up online is getting curious about the generations that didn’t. What did they do with their time? What did they do if they didn’t have a phone in their hand? How did you live your life in a pre-phone world?

And so I think we’re seeing these generations that have grown up with online as kind of a default way of being in the world. Getting really curious about offline doesn’t necessarily just mean I’m turning off my phone. I don’t even know that many people who turn their phones off.

We just assume that our phones are going to be on and that we are– I think, there’s a lot of interest in these questions around, like, why am I accessible all the time? Why am I online all the time? What does it actually mean to get offline? What does that feel like?

And so I really see it as this very authentic curiosity that questions a kind of existential thing about existing in the world. What would it mean if I wasn’t online all the time? And hobbies, especially these kind of analog, manual, process-based hobbies, are really intriguing to people because they get you offline and whether it’s knitting or sourdough or gardening or scrapbooking, whatever it is that you’re going to do, it really kind of requires you to put the devices down and get immersed in something else.

And so I think we’re seeing this trend and this push back against hustle culture, really coming from this authentic curiosity of I never got to know what the world felt like without this online dimension and I’m really curious about it and I want to see what it feels like. And hobbies feel like a really natural place to go explore that.

It is quite ironic. The fact that this is almost a TikTok trend among younger generations saying, “I want to get off my phone.” How do you think Pinterest is meeting this cultural moment right now?

The biggest way is just in what we’re saying to consumers right now, which is the best thing you can find online is a reason to get offline. And really, this idea that Pinterest can give you that reason to get offline. We’re a visual search and discovery platform, which basically means that people come here to find inspiration, that then gives them an off ramp to go do stuff.

So if I’m browsing on the platform I’m experiencing, we like to think of this as a more positive space online. Pinterest has never been the app that I feel like I need to detox from on my phone. If I’m cutting myself off from access to certain apps, Pinterest never really pops up in my mind as something I need to limit my time on.

We really feel like the platform is this positive space where you’re not coming for likes, you’re not coming from that kind of external or social validation piece, you’re coming to really just explore, discover, curate your taste. I really feel like my own Pinterest has become like a museum of myself. I’m curating and I’m collecting things, and I can look back at boards that I made when I was a graduate student, when I was a college student, and how different and how the same I am as a person? My visual identity and what I’m drawn to evolves over time.

Pinterest meets this moment because it really gives people the space to organize their ideas and explore new things, and then decide and feel kind empowered to say, “I’m going to curate this over time, I’m going to add to it, I’m going to take off from it, I’m going to grow with it.” And so Pinterest is really designed in every way from that kind of visual search experience to this curation potential to help you dream, make decisions about those dreams and then get offline and go do it and make your dreams happen.

The best reason to get online is to find a reason to go offline. That’s exactly how Pinterest works. It’s like, come on, get inspired and then go do it. We want you to go do it.

I’m an avid Pinterest user. I love that you hit on OK, yes, all of my probably wedding boards from when I was 21 don’t quite match the aesthetic of when I actually got married. But there’s so much a Pinterest that is still a reflection of me, even when I look back at my old boards. That’s such a cool thing to think about. And then I love using Pinterest for travel.

When people talk about this kind of grandma and grandpa core trend crocheting, sourdough, knitting, mahjong is really big now. In my neighborhood there’s a group that plays.

Mine too. Yeah, it’s so fun.

Yeah, these tactical hobbies. Why do you think that these energize people?

That’s such a good question because I think we do see, there’s this fizzy, excited energy around a lot of these hobbies right now. I’ve had friends that have gotten into the most niche, weird hobby. They’re making their own paper. They’re learning how to weave baskets. They are bird watching.

I think there’s something about realizing that you are capable of making things, even if you’re not perfect at it, which I think is a big part of these hobbies, is really recognizing that you can be part of the world. Like going out to birdwatch. My backyard is so much more interesting than I thought it was, and I have to look up from my phone to really experience that. I might use an app on my phone to help me identify what bird that is?

But I think it’s energizing to realize that your curiosity pays out. If I’m going to go to mahjong club on Thursday night, or if I’m going to go in my backyard and try to figure out what are those plants growing along the fence line. Being curious and having that validated by actually going and then seeing how engaging, how fun, how interesting, how weird the world actually is? It’s just so much bigger than I think what we experience on our devices a lot of the time.

So the energy in part, I think, comes from some of the validation of I wondered about this thing. I was dreaming about this thing. Then I went and did it, and it was just as fun or difficult or strange as I thought it would be.

That’s like juicy. That’s good feelings. That’s an exciting experience to have.

Do you have any hobbies that you enjoy partaking in, Haley?

I do, and I feel. Speaking of validation, I love working at Pinterest, where it’s like we’re so interested in hobbies and creativity. I took a pottery class a few years ago.

I always wanted to in school and I just never did. I never made it a priority and I ended up taking a class at a local studio. Then I took another class at a different studio and learned how to throw clay on a wheel and make my own pots and make my own mugs, and it really helped me rethink my own personal definitions of creativity.

We’ll talk about my academic background, but I’m a deeply analytical person and I spend a lot of time intellectualizing. I’m in my head a lot. My work is happening in my head a lot, and so I was really craving more time, like in my body.

And I got to be honest, I don’t love working out. Like going to the gym was not a break. It was just more work. So I was really craving something that was like, how am I going to be creative? I don’t think of myself as very artistic or at the time I didn’t.

And so once I started playing with clay, which then got me to start sketching what I wanted to make on the wheel, it just really opened up, just how limited I had been with myself and thinking, oh, I’m not creative, I’m not cool enough, or I’m not good enough to go try this thing. And just kind of forcing myself like, just go take a class, even if it goes terribly. You can go one time. And I fell in love with it the first time. I’m still pretty bad at it.

Again, just so validating to say I was curious about this thing. I was hoping it would help me disconnect with my online life and all this kind of intellectual work. I wanted to plug into something different. I wanted to be more creative, and it worked.

And then it honestly acts like a little bit of a gateway drug because like I said, now I’m like sketching and painting. Gotten really interested in color theory, and what colors do I choose to paint the things that I make? You tap on one little area and then it just opens up this whole world.

Clay is a big one for me. Reading, obviously, love to read. Anything that just helps me put everything down, turn this off a little bit and just be more present with myself, my body, my energy. Hobbies are magic for that.

And that probably helps create community for you too. You’ve probably met people. You have to go out of your house and attend this class. That can be intimidating to some people.

Oh yeah, I’m an introvert. That’s a very comfortable thing for me to identify as and I typically find a lot of community building. I kind of have to force myself into those situations, but I found that having the hobby creates this intermediary. I’m there to throw clay. I’m there to be creative.

And then, oh, my gosh, there’s this sweet community around me, and they are focused on their clay and they’re focused on what they’re making, their goals, their beautiful, strange art. I mean, it’s so inspiring, even just to go to the studio and see what everybody else is doing. I really do feel like hobbies offer an intermediary that kind of softens some of the anxiety of socializing and of putting yourself out there because it gives you something else to focus on rather than thinking about like, I’m always like, what am I doing with my hands?

I’m in front of other people. Do I sound weird? Am I showing up in the right way?

All that goes away when I’m like, I’m here to throw a mug and somebody next to me is making a vase. Somebody across the way is making a birdbath. It just helps channel all that creative energy in the right direction, so that I can really connect and enjoy.

You talked about at the beginning this digital fatigue and Gen Z’s grew up on their phone, whereas millennials didn’t. Why do you think these younger generations are craving this slower manual processes with crafts and other tactile hobbies? They’re still balancing, of course, this instant digital gratification, but any insight into that?

I mean, I think the key word is balance. I think Gen Z and also Gen Alpha younger generations are really interested in the tactile. My husband collects and uses typewriters.

My nieces and nephews, they’re 2 to 14 years old, 18 years old. They come over to our house and they just want to touch the typewriters. They want to try them. They have lots of questions like, so you just put paper in it? Where does the ink come from?

And like, it really makes them start thinking about, for them a lot of their experiences with creativity are digitally mediated. And so when they come over to our house and there’s a clay wheel and there’s typewriters and there’s art supplies all over the place, I think there really is this interest and curiosity, that kind of reveals the mechanics of this stuff to you. Like my nephew asking, “Where does the ink come from?”

You never really think about that on a computer. You’re not really thinking, and most of us don’t even print stuff anymore. So to suddenly have a tangible. I wrote a thing and now I’m holding it. That seems to blow their minds a little bit.

Screens and digital interfaces, I think about this a lot, they are smooth. The texture of them, they’re smooth. But then all the experiences that we have on them are optimized. They are smooth. They are frictionless.

A lot of user experience design thinks about how to make experiences easier, more consumable, more doable online. And I think you can really only enjoy so much frictionless life before you’re like, I want some friction. And we saw friction maxing was trending earlier this year.

This idea of I want friction, I want challenge, I want something that’s difficult, and so I really don’t think of it as a coincidence at all. It’s all coming from this same root place of this curiosity and this interest of making things with your hands, doing things with your hands, holding the things you make. Coming from a liberal arts background and a liberal arts education, it’s so human to recognize that good stories come out of friction.

Stories come from conflict and tension and things happening, even just at the basic level, like, Cinderella, loses her slipper, Robinson Crusoe, gets stuck on an island, Dr. Frankenstein makes this creature and then doesn’t like the creature. That’s big friction, and that’s where the stories get interesting. What’s going to happen next.

I think it’s really human to respond to and be very curious about friction and tension and challenge, because that’s where experience comes from. That’s where you want to push and that’s where you grow. And so these younger generations saying like, “Hey, thanks for making everything so smooth and easy for me.”

I think sometimes maybe it comes from boredom. Can something please be hard for me? Can something please not be personalized and optimized for me?

Going back to Clay, experiencing something like clay falling apart in your hands on the wheel. I’ve spent an hour trying to shape, and make something and then it just falls apart. That’s good friction.

I’m typing on a typewriter and I hit the wrong key. There’s no backspace. That’s cool friction.

It’s so human to be like, where’s the messy part. Where’s the experience part. That’s what you’re going to remember. That’s what’s going to be sticky for you.

People saying it’s too smooth. It’s too easy. I think a lot of these grandma and grandpa hobbies, these manual tactile processes, they’re really satisfying because they’re doing something for and with your brain that the smooth and the optimized just don’t do.

And with your pottery example, if it falls apart. Hey, I’m going to go back and do the class the next week or the next month and pick up where I left off. I love that having that friction. That’s a great point.

And speaking of stories, reading puzzling is having a moment. Last year, Barnes and Noble opened 60 new stores across 67 locations nationwide for the first time in decades. So what’s your advice for people who want to pick up those types of offline hobbies?

I love this question so much. We’ve seen headlines that are saying, the end of reading, reading is on the decline. But then you look at these micro trends, you look at these store openings and you see challenges, that dominant story we’re hearing. And it’s like there’s a lot of nuance in there.

And there’s a lot of reasons to believe people are reading new genres, or they’re having a puzzle party instead of going out for a drink. That’s super interesting. What you can boil it down to is what’s trending right now is curiosity. The underlying impulse is just a lot of curiosity about how we’re spending our time.

In terms of trying to pick up an offline hobby, or trying to plug into this feeling. My advice would be what it usually always is for anyone who’s looking for advice is, go to yourself and start with a free write. My writing teacher background is showing through there, but I love to set a weird timer like 11 minutes or 17 minutes, something that’s not going to rattle in your brain oh, 15 minutes. It means exactly this thing.

It’s like, set a weird timer, and then ask yourself, “What am I hoping to experience?” Am I looking for a community? Is that my dominant curiosity is like, what if I made new friends, or what if I found new people to connect with? Is your dominant curiosity, what do I think? And you want to really go deep with yourself, and you want to engage in some critical thinking or the friction of reading something really challenging.

Do you want to learn a specific skill or a new language? Do you want to make a mess is part of it like my life feels really tidy. I just want to do something messy and then you just write about it? I think you just ask yourself, what am I trying to get out of this offline experience that I’m craving?

And there will be at least one hobby for whatever reason you have. And all those reasons I’ve listed and hundreds more are very valid. Like what is the hobby for?

And then I think you’ll have some arrows pointing you in some directions. If you’re looking for community, that’s where it would be like we’ll go to a pottery class or go to the mahjong club.

Join the pickleball.

Oh my gosh, I love pickleball. But yeah, if it’s not about community, there’s going to be hobbies for you too. If maybe you want to get more in touch with yourself then, oh my gosh, try journaling or pick up a classic novel and try reading something outside of your normal bookshelf.

Curiosity is what’s trending. Get curious with yourself a little bit and give yourself some permission to be vulnerable, nobody’s got to read your freewrite. You can throw it away when you’re done. Just be curious and honest with yourself about why this appeals to you, and what’s kind of needling at you and making you want to try? That’s probably going to set you down a pretty authentic pathway to finding something new.

Another trend that’s popping up a lot is this return to nostalgia, especially, I feel like the ’90s era. How do we go back to that childlike joy and creativity? Why do you think this younger generation and even millennials are seeking that out again, of not having a phone and having all that curiosity and creativity?

So every year Pinterest puts out the Pinterest predicts trend report, and in 2026, we actually kind of saw this coming. One of the trends that we identified was throwback kid, which is all about childlike wonder, desire for tactile experiences. Very nostalgic. Just in the name throwback and throwback kid being really about vintage toys.

I’m seeing it on my own algorithms like people modding old video game consoles. So it’s like the millennial. I have a Nintendo 64 that I like still play, and I think part of it is millennials, and even like older Gen Z are parents now.

And so they kind of want to give their kids similar experiences they had feeling nostalgic about, well, these are the video games I played or these are the games I played. These are the things I wore and sharing that the ’90s is everywhere right now. And I think a big part of that is the impulse to share that and to have that throwback to what mattered to you as a kid and getting in touch with that and sharing it with a new generation.

And it really is so interesting that Gen Z seems really keen to understand it, like, they really want to know about it. And I love when I see a Gen Z creator posting about I bought my first corded phone. I’m just like, that is so cool that you care about that, and that you think that’s interesting and you wanted to try that. You wanted to know what it felt like to answer the phone in a different way. It’s such a cool curiosity.

They have nostalgia almost for a period of time that they didn’t live through.

Yeah, and I think that really speaks to the fact that nostalgia is definitely more of a feeling than an actuality. It’s like this yearning for a place that probably never existed, even for Millennials. It’s like we’re looking through a lot of rose colored glasses. And a lot of these nostalgic items or products or experiences I loved, like this cultural pushback when Phoebe Bridgers was doing the no phone concert.

Some people were like, “Oh, that is the coolest thing ever. I want to do that.” And other people were like, “Hey, hold on, I don’t want to put my phone down.” Don’t make me put my phone away.

I think there’s a lot of nostalgia for this moment of like winded phones not dictate the experience. I’m really curious about what that would have felt like. And millennials, it’s like we know, let us show you.

But then there’s this nostalgic almost like fantasy element of I want to try this for myself, and I want to access this for myself. I still don’t totally understand it, but I’m going to get a typewriter or I’m going to try to plug-in a corded phone. It’s so interesting.

Well, people are craving this return to nostalgia, offline hobbies, et cetera, a lot of stuff is still driven by what we see on our social media timelines. What do you make of this paradox? How does it impact your work at Pinterest too?

It’s a good question because it is like the paradox at the heart of all these trends is like they happen online. For me, what I really like about that is we’ve always lived in a social world. So whether those influences were coming to us because we were in like a packed beer hall and we saw something or we saw something in the hallway at school or we saw something at a party or we saw something on social media.

We’re always kind of collecting and I think curating, deciding what we hold on to deciding what we don’t pay attention to. We’re always kind of moving in that internal external exercise of being a person, shaping what matters to you? What your identity is? What you care about? What you don’t care about?

And so I think for a lot of people, some of these hobbies that they see online maybe echo things that they’ve seen in their lives, but they maybe didn’t know how to pay attention or they didn’t understand what went into that hobby because they saw someone in their family do it, for example, but they didn’t really know how to lean in or how to do it for themselves. And I think sometimes, again, like the online can help mediate that.

Oh, I never even thought of making my own holiday ornaments, or I never knew that this rice dish that my great grandmother used to make that my family loves. I didn’t know how easy it was to make. I found a recipe. I’m going to try it for myself.

And so I think for some people, they get the recipe from their family. Or they get the recipe card or they get the invitation to try something. But I think for other people, being online is another way to see what people are making and creating and doing and sometimes offers you a broader context than what you might have access to in your immediate community or family unit or region. And being online is also full of communities.

There’s so many communities online. So I think all of this just kind of suggests the same human pattern, which is like we want connection. We’re very creative. We’re very curious. Where am I getting my inputs from?

And then what are my outputs look like. That sounds a little corporate. What I’m taking in, what I’m getting inspired by. The online can be such a rich place to find that inspiration.

Increasingly, I think what I do with that, people want it to happen offline. They want to have that experience offline.

And then I think some people want to celebrate that they had it. And so they share it online. And I think creates this loop for me. I think what we’re seeing is offline is becoming a really important part of the process again.

For a long time, I think the question has been like, how can we digitize pretty much everything? But like my mom loves, I think it’s called flosstube, which is people like knitting and crocheting online and talking about what they’re making, showing their works in progress, teaching new techniques. And she didn’t necessarily have access to that kind of community in her neighborhood.

And so for her, it’s like she’s getting better at stitching and it’s become such a big part of her life. And her favorite hobby next to pickleball. It’s offered her that community in a space where she maybe didn’t have it. But then now she’s also making that community for herself.

So I think there’s something really cool about this push to make the offline a bigger priority and bring it back into the conversation and say, “For a while we tried to say everything was online and that the digital was where everything was happening.” And I think a lot of people are saying like, “No, a lot of really cool and important stuff happens offline. I kind of want to talk about that online, or I want to talk to my community about that, and it happens online.”

So yeah, I don’t know. It’s a really good question. I feel like maybe there’s some liberal arts students at Purdue that’ll take it up as a research topic, because I do think there’s so much interest there and curiosity about why we move on and offline.

How have you seen hobbies impact well-being? You have the grind of your job and your quote unquote, “nine to five” and other life responsibilities. How can hobbies really make a difference in your life?

I think a big part of it is, for me, trying new things increases my well-being profoundly. Just being willing to try the pottery class or dunk a vase in a new color. And I have no idea what it’s going to look like when it comes out of the kiln. I think engaging with these spaces of the unknown and stretching yourself out of that perceived comfort zone can be really satisfying.

In terms of well-being, I really do feel like it goes back to what we were talking about with friction. There’s a lot of satisfaction to be had in finding out how you personally navigate and negotiate friction and challenges. It teaches you so much about yourself, and maybe even sometimes illuminates things about yourself that you’d like to modify or grow or change or lean into. Maybe you discover that you’re the best person in a crisis, and you want to lean into that and understand that about yourself.

And so I think with this concept of well-being and friction, I feel like the two are really related and finding the spaces that can help you facilitate, whether that is like getting inspired or going into a class, moving out of that comfort zone and going somewhere to try something new. I think a lot of that can feel very frightening, and maybe sometimes that’s part of the friction. This is supposed to be a little tricky. This is supposed to be a little hard, especially if you’re like a perfectionist. I’m speaking personally here.

Perfectionism can really wear on your well-being and make you pretty unhappy. Being bad at pottery is really good for my being because it gives me friction. It gives me a challenge. It gives me something to not become perfect at, but to challenge my perfectionism and to constantly remind myself like, this is not a space where I get to be perfect.

I think we need it. I think human beings need friction, and I do think that giving yourself those challenges drives your well-being. It helps you have the self-reflection moments that are necessary to really understand who you are?

Where you’re at? What you like? What you believe?

If you’re good at everything too, and you find–

How boring?

Yeah, you find something that you are challenged by. That’s great character building, honestly.

Yeah.

We talked about pickleball. We talked about puzzles. I’m so glad you touched on recipes, because with DoorDash and all these delivery services coming at you now, cooking is totally a hobby. I never really thought about it. I love cooking, I love, like, being done with my work day and then knowing I’m going to go cook dinner.

I don’t make super fancy homemade stuff, but I cook every night. What is Pinterest data though telling you about hobby based searches? What are people most interested in, and how do you leverage all of that data?

I have some notes on this because I’m so excited to talk to you about specific trends we’re seeing. There’s one you’re going to love, speaking of cooking. We have a brand new fall hobbies trend report that came out this season. And so this is really hot off the presses, like the latest findings we have.

Right now, we see that 51% of Gen Z tell us that hobbies add joy to their lives. So half of them are saying like, this is a joyful source in my life. And then outside of a specific demographic, 8 in 10 Pinterest users tell us that Pinterest motivates them to try new things.

We’re seeing this really juicy intersection, where people are motivated to try new things on the platform. Gen Z is saying that these hobbies bring them a lot of joy. And so then, I don’t think it’s a surprise that our data shows us hobbies are trending and in a big way for the fall, the report has lots of cross sections and goes into what the search terms look like. I picked out a few of my favorites.

One of the big trends we’re seeing for the fall is a trend that we’re calling kitchen witch, which is so fun. It’s very aligned and just feels kind of cosmically connected to the practical magic to movie coming out. And we’re headed into the fall witchiness is in the air cozy. I think it’s a little bit maybe of a cultural evolution of cottage core, but this is all about transforming your kitchen into an enchanted space.

So very much. I think, what you’re describing as cooking every night, becoming this kind of magical, fun space where you’re kind of resetting from the day, you’re shifting.

Ritualized.

Yes, it’s ritualized. You’re kind of shifting your energy very intentionally into different headspace, different creativity, and some of the search and objects that are popping up in this trend are like amber jars, little tiny spice jars, concoctions like making things in mason jars, canning, homemade spice blends, even like homemade kombucha.

We’ve seen a massive increase in searches around the terms herbal apothecary. I mean, I love the original practical magic, the first film. I can just picture that beautiful kitchen space they have with the herbs hanging in the windows and the caldron on the stove. Like, that’s very much the energy coming out of kitchen witch.

And another big one, maybe this will resonate with you too, is home cafe engineering.

Obsessed. Homemade coffee recipes. I am, you hit it.

Yes.

You got it.

Yes, this is like making your own fancy coffee at home. And getting inspired by–

All over my face.

It’s everywhere. Yeah.

Like banana bread.

Yes, that’s one that we’ve seen banana syrup recipe for coffee has increased in searches by over 900% since last year. So right that just tells us, like the banana bread latte trend is here in a big way. People are loving it for fall. It’s cozy, flavorful, it’s unexpected.

I think it brings a lot of that novelty, that’s for sure. Having a moment.

Listeners and viewers, if you haven’t tried a banana bread latte.

You can make your own.

Give it a try.

You can make your own. Yeah.

Look it up.

Look it up. Yeah, my favorite trend that was in the report in this fall report trend is called handmade hacker. And this one is really all about making your own kind of cultural objects. So making your own birthday magazine, modding video game consoles, cyberdeck creation, music journaling.

There’s a big increase in searches for bedazzling your headphones or your wallet or your laptop like bedazzling things. Really just taking that deep desire to use your hands to everything that you’re doing. I’m going to bedazzle it.

I’m going to customize it. I’m going to put patches or stickers on it. I’m really going to make this my own. I have for sure bedazzled all of my moisturizer bottles in my bathroom.

I was going to say, “I keep seeing this trend, like, skincare items that people bedazzled.”

It’s so cute. I was really intrigued to see the surgeon trends around, like birthday magazine. This idea that you design a magazine about yourself or your year, or you’re almost turning this scrapbooking energy into something that feels a little more editorial. There’s so many places where you can print stuff like that now, and you can actually get a copy of your birthday magazine. This idea of zine culture, which also feels very ’90s, coming back into everybody’s consciousness.

Wow, all interesting stuff. We’ll link that in our show notes that report. So if people are curious, go check it out.

You touched on this a little bit. Pinterest’s latest brand campaign is that living your life and not just scrolling it.

Yeah.

How is Pinterest helping people get offline? It ties in perfectly with what we’re talking about today.

Yeah, it really does. Our latest campaign, this whole concept of best reason to go online is to find a reason to get offline. I think it really acts like a form of permission or an invitation to people.

I personally believe platforms are the most successful when they treat people like people. We’re hearing people say like, “I don’t want to spend my life online. My screen time is out of control. I want to get offline.”

Hobbies are bringing me joy. I’m inspired to try new things. I don’t want to sit-in one place.

And so I think a lot of the energy right now is validating that and saying, “You know what?” We don’t want you to spend your life scrolling either. We want to help you go live this big, beautiful life that you’re dreaming up for yourself, and hopefully building that platform that helps you do it and helps you please have a big dream. That’s such a beautiful thing.

Please shoot for the moon. Like, have this big, gorgeous idea even if it’s just like you’re having some friends over for dinner. Dream big about it, put a theme on it, make a color scheme for it. Have fun with it.

And I think it goes deeper than a lot of the trends right now where we see everything is aestheticized, everything kind of has a look. I think sometimes can feel like pressure that I have to elevate everything. What I hope is it feels more like an invitation. Get offline.

Whatever that looks like for you. Whatever that dream is for you, get inspired. Have fun getting inspired. Whether that’s like, I’m going to find the perfect banana bread latte recipe for me, or I want to throw a really wild and wacky Halloween party with my friends. Maybe I just want to make my apartment more cozy for the winter months.

Whatever that looks like for you, enjoy the process of it. Enjoy the dreaming about it and the curating and finding your taste. And once you’ve found it, hopefully we’ve helped you light that pathway to your next steps.

So like, I know what I’m going to do now. I know what my insane Halloween costume is going to look like, or I’m ready to go to the store and get these banana bread ingredients so I can try that latte.

That’s really the dream, right. Is creating that invitation for you and saying, even though you’re online right now, we want you to get offline. We want you to and we want to help you do that.

People are going to be sick of my banana bread latte, examples here, but no.

They’re so good. I had my first one last week, and I really liked it.

But again, with the friction, you try a recipe or you’re trying to make your own, it doesn’t work. OK, next morning I’m going to try it this way. And then when you nail it and get excited about it, you can share it with other people. You can be proud of it. Like there’s even the littlest example like that.

Oh, it’s such a good one. Because I think we do have this obsessively optimized culture that I do think drives a certain breed of perfectionism, and I struggle with it on the pottery wheel. I’ve mentioned it, but I think it wouldn’t surprise me if people are like, “Oh, I hated that latte, and I never tried it again.”

Yeah.

Right. I think there’s some energy in it. Again, I think people need this invitation. And I like these kind of proposals to people of just try it.

And not taking the simple way out. I’m going to go through the Starbucks drive-through, and get I’m going to try it, and curate my own recipe. I love it.

With the magic, I think, of that recognition of oh, I could do this. I’m capable of doing this. These things that I think sometimes look or appear so optimized or so perfectly made that are owned and over in some other space, it’s like, “Well, what if I could do that?”

It blew my mind the first time. I like mended my own button. Instead of buying a new shirt, and that’s such a little thing. But my grandma looks at me like I’m crazy. Like, what do you mean you don’t replace your buttons?

And so there is this kind of generational, profound change in how we approach even the most basic of tasks, making our morning coffee. I really love this campaign that’s happening right now that we’re working on at Pinterest that this idea of please get offline. Please go try something new.

It’s fun. It’s satisfying. It’s human. If you needed permission, you’ve got it. Go to your point.

You don’t have to take the easiest route to something every time. Maybe it’s worth trying it at home. And yeah, most of the coffee I make at home is awful. I’m not an expert at it, but I learn what I like. I learn what I don’t like.

You learn a lot in the process of some pretty bad lattes along the way.

Walk us through your role at Pinterest. What inspires you about your work and the future of Pinterest?

So in my role, I work in our sales and go-to-market organization. A lot of my work is focused on helping people that are advertising on Pinterest understand how the platform actually works, and really also helping them understand what people want from the platform. If we’re designing this experience for people to dream and make decisions and curate their taste and have this empowering experience and then get offline. My role is really to help advertisers understand that so that they show up in a way that makes sense for people.

The ideal is that the way they’re showing up on the platform facilitates that experience and keeps it what people want to experience. My title, which is story lead, is really about shepherding the narrative development of how to talk about the platform, and how to take what we see in the data trends or consumer behavior? Even something like 51% of Gen Z say hobbies bring them joy.

How do we help an advertiser understand? That’s such a critical insight to the mindset and how they can show up and how we want to facilitate those connections and drown out the noise and the behavior or the experience that you might have on other platforms. Helping really tell the story of why this platform is different, because it does have to do with that permission to get offline.

The kind of personal curation, the exploration, the board building, the saving, and just really put it into context of when people are on different apps, they’re looking for different experiences. When they’re going to different channels, they’re going for different reasons and really just helping to validate why people are here, what you can do to show up for them in a way that makes sense, and how we can continue to create a great experience?

I love that. Well, let’s get into your time at Purdue. You have a background in English. You received your PhD in English from the College of Liberal Arts.

How did Purdue prepare you to work for a global company like Pinterest? How did your liberal arts background set you up for success? You kind of kept referencing that throughout the whole interview.

That’s very true to who I am. I am obsessed with my liberal arts background. Purdue’s PhD program, and shout out to the phenomenal English department. They are so serious about professionalization.

As a PhD student in the English department, that meant they were not just preparing me for a single pathway. They’re used to really be this narrative around getting a PhD in English. That honestly was really frustrating.

I have three English degrees bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD. I stuck with English the whole way through, and I just kept hearing this weird assumption that, oh, what are you going to do with that? You can’t do anything with that. You’re just going to become a professor.

First of all, what a great dream that is like. And also, there’s so many other things that I can do with a liberal arts degree. And I really started to see that.

There’s so much I’m learning, especially as you get into rhetoric and compositional studies, even pedagogical studies. How do people learn? All of those investigations are so rich in my career now. I use rhetorical awareness every single day.

It’s not even like oh, in this moment, I’m using this thing. It’s just a part of who I am. I flex those liberal arts skills day in, day out. My job calls for them constantly to be aware of my audience, which is another way to say, like caring about my reader, to be aware of the context that I’m talking them into which is this kind of cultural awareness and what stories are out in the marketplace right now.

What are people hearing about Gen Z? What are they hearing about trends? What are they hearing about online behavior, and understanding those as stories and as narratives? And then Purdue especially, really powerfully giving PhD students a deep understanding that it’s OK if your next step is not going on to the academic job market.

My mentor, Dr. Maren Linett, she was just phenomenal in continually encouraging me to believe in my skills and believe in myself. And that kind of belief from somebody just changes your life. Big love for the Purdue English department. They really set me up for success.

Incredible. Looking at the future of hobbies, any other things that are on the horizon, any trends. What does Pinterest have to say about the future and the forecasting of trends for hobbies?

Of what’s coming?

Yes.

I’ve kind of mentioned this already. We always put out the Pinterest predicts trend report. There’s also a palette, where we predict the colors that are going to trend in the next year. And that comes out at the beginning of every year. So that’ll be out in January.

But you can see the one for 2026. It’s available. You can go read it. You can go check it out. I just love the trend report.

Our trend report functions a little differently than others in the industry because it’s a not yet trending report. And it’s all based on that real human data. So this is what we’re seeing people curating and saving. We’re watching for those peaks and rises when the banana bread latte becomes the thing.

But usually right, it can happen in the context of a larger trend unfolding, which, like for the fall report, is we’re seeing this like home cafe energy. And people are really excited about this.

I think the tangible, tactile hobbies are here to stay. I don’t think it’s like a flash in the culture. I think it’s something that’s going to sustain in our 2026 trends, two of them that are very near and dear to my heart, and probably those other like liberal arts minded folks would be like poet corps and pen pal.

These are all about that academic aesthetic, handwritten letters, getting a postcard in the mail, leather satchels, coffee table. Your steaming cup of tea. I just think there’s a real romance and coziness to the tangible that I don’t see it going away anytime soon, and I am curious to see when that new trend report comes out for 2027, like, what are the evolution of these trends look like, and how do we see these spikes and levels of interest carry out, like, where do they sustain? That’s always a really fun thing to look at.

Well, it has been an absolute privilege and pleasure talking to you. We’ve chatted about so many different things. Is there anything I missed that you want to let our listeners and viewers know?

I do want to say, if you are a liberal arts student listening to this, I just want to reiterate that if you’re hearing that narrative that there’s one path you can take, or if you’re hearing people saying to you like, “Oh, what are you going to do with that?” Don’t listen to them. I love my career. I love the creative and weird winding pathway that my own career has taken. And I think liberal arts trained me and helped me understand that that’s valuable and that’s OK that there doesn’t always have to be just one single answer or road.

And you can do really exciting and unexpected things with liberal arts skills. They’re not soft skills. They are hard skills. They are measurable. They are meaningful.

Bring those critical thinking skills because I really believe liberal arts has always, and continues to set people up for really exciting careers, no matter where that ends up taking you.

I love that. Well, thank you again for this lovely conversation. We really appreciate having you on.

Yeah. This was so much fun. Boiler up.

We can’t thank Haley enough for joining us. She’s so genuine and easy to talk to. Make sure you head over to our YouTube page, youtube.com/@sign. “This is Purdue” to watch our bonus segments from Haley, including some of the most searched for hobbies on Pinterest this fall, and ideas for affordable hobbies on a budget. And as always, be sure to subscribe to “This is Purdue” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

“This is Purdue” is brought to you by Purdue brand studio. The podcast is hosted and produced by me, Kate Young. The creative team behind the shows videography, design, and writing and research includes Jon Garcia, Cheryl Glotzbach, Ashvini Malshe, John Underwood, and podcast Young. Social media marketing is led by Maria Welch and our project manager is Rain Gu.

Thanks for listening to “This is Purdue.” For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/broadcast. And head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe today so you never miss an episode.

You can also check out all of our podcast video content on our YouTube page at youtube.com/@thisispurdue. And as always, boiler up.

In 1935, at the height of her celebrity, Amelia Earhart began her unprecedented work at Purdue University as a career counselor for women and advisor to the Department of Aeronautics. Almost 90 years later, her presence is still felt across campus.  

From the Amelia Earhart Faculty-in-Residence Program, to the Amelia Earhart Scholarship, to a statue of her nestled in front of Earhart dining court. And now we’re preparing to add a new chapter to the decades long connection between the legendary aviator and our University, which sponsored her 1937 attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world.  

On that flight, Amelia, her navigator Fred Noonan, and the Lockheed Electra 10E that produced supporters helped her purchase went missing while trying to reach Howland Island. Their disappearance has remained a mystery ever since, despite several search attempts over the decades. But this fate may soon change.  

Nearly nine decades after Amelia’s disappearance in the South Pacific. Purdue University is working alongside the Archeological Legacy Institute and Purdue Research Foundation to identify her lost plane and help complete her historic journey. Now the eyes of the world are on us to help solve this decades long mystery.  

Hi, I’m Kate Young, and you’re listening to Finding Amelia, a mini-series from This is Purdue, the official podcast of Purdue University. Like so many throughout history, we at This is Purdue have been captivated by Amelia’s Boilermaker story and legacy of persistence and excellence.  

Her contributions to women’s education and aviation have shaped our University. Ahead of Purdue University, Purdue Research Foundation and Archeological Legacy Institute led expedition to potentially identify Amelia’s plane. This is Purdue is diving into the story of Amelia and her historic ties to Purdue.  

In this four part series, we’re featuring Boilermaker experts who will help us explore Amelia’s life, dreams and influential relationships. The history behind the Purdue funded plane she was flying when she went missing, and a special deep dive into items from University archives that her husband gifted to Purdue. We’ll also dig into why people have continued to search for her for nearly 90 years.  

Today, in this first episode, we’re joined by Kelly Hiller, Chief Marketing Officer at Purdue University. During her over 20 years at Purdue, Kelly has led several marketing campaigns inspired by Amelia’s persistence. She is also inspired by Amelia as a fellow Boilermaker and has a deep commitment to celebrating female trailblazers.  

We’re going to examine who Amelia was before she became a famed aviator, her journey to Purdue and what’s made her so captivating across generations. This is part one, Who was Amelia Earhart Kelly, welcome.  

Thank you for having me.  

I think it’s important to be up front with our listeners and viewers. The expedition was first announced in July of 2025 and it’s been postponed. The Purdue team had to wait while final approvals were sought from the government of Kiribati, the Pacific Ocean island nation that includes Nikumaroro, and that’s the island where the expedition will take place.  

Yes, that’s exactly right. So we then were able to announce on what would have been Amelia’s 129th birthday, that we were moving forward with the expedition with our lead Archeological Legacy Institute, alongside the Purdue Research Foundation, that we had acquired the necessary approvals from the country of Kiribati to move forward with what we’re calling the Taraia Object expedition.  

Now, when I refer to the Taraia Object, what is that? That is the object that has been identified through satellite imagery that is right off the Coast of Nikumaroro that closely matches the configuration of Amelia Earhart’s plane.  

So now that we do have that approval and we’re very, very grateful to the country of Kiribati and working with us. That was definitely important to us that we go through that process, that we do it the right way out of respect for not only the country, but their environment. To ensure that when we went on the expedition, that not only were we doing it safely, we were doing it in a way that respected the country and its people, was definitely important to us.  

So we really appreciate those who remained engaged the supporters, the Amelia enthusiasts, the researchers. As the timeline shifted, many people still remained engaged, like I said, throughout this process. So we will be moving forward and going on that expedition soon.  

So one year later, here we are. We’re back and we’re ready to go  

We’re back.  

Why do you think it’s so important for Purdue to have this strong connection to Amelia’s name and legacy?  

She’s one of our own. So the plane that she flew as part of her around the world flight was purchased by the Purdue Research Foundation, and her intent was always to bring that plane back to Purdue University. She called it her flying laboratory, and it was really important for her to bring that plane back and use it as a teaching tool for students.  

But beyond that, her legacy is still felt very much at Purdue University today. We have the Amelia Earhart Terminal that’s at the Purdue University airport. We have Earhart Hall, which ironically, I moved my daughter into. And it was a lot of fun just to walk through Earhart Hall and see all the memorabilia, her photos, really talking about her story of persistence, of innovation. Her spirit for adventure, which are very much resonate with the essence of a Boilermaker.  

And her statue stands outside Earhart Hall, which is definitely a symbol. Probably the most notable thing that’s still at Purdue today, though in her spirit, is the Ninety-Nines which Amelia founded. That chapter is still at Purdue University today. So there’s still so many touch points. And of course, we have so much in our archives about her.  

But overall, her story is still so timely. When we announced back in July of 2025 that this expedition was happening, it was the greatest earned media day in Purdue history, which is just wild, right? But we also can see it in our own storytelling.  

Whenever our profile, we posted of Amelia stills, one of our top stories on our Purdue stories hub and our Amelia keywords, we still rank really, really high. All these data points show us that the public is still very, very, very engaged in her story. And almost 90 years later, that level of engagement has not wavered.  

And I think it’s even more poignant that we’re going on this expedition close to the 250th anniversary of our country, because Americans don’t like to leave a mystery unsolved. And so we want to move forward and hopefully solve that mystery and tell that story to the world. We believe we owe it to Amelia I’m so excited to see how this story unfolds.  

I think that’s a really important context, so thank you. People are still interested in Amelia, so let’s dive into Amelia herself growing up and then up until the point where she disappeared on this flight. But at the time when she was at Purdue, she was an international celebrity. When she became one of the first professional female pilots to fly across the Atlantic. What led up to this big culmination?  

Well, let’s start at the beginning. I mean, she grew up in Kansas with a sister, her parents surrounded by cousins. But even from an early age, she was very much a tomboy, had that sense of adventure.  

And that was fueled when in 1920, in Long Beach, California, she took a flight with Frank Hawks, and that really inspired her love of flying. At that point, there was the flying circuses, so almost like Carnival-esque type of experiences. But even then, like, she saw the potential of what this could be and what this could unlock for her.  

So she left home in search of that adventure. And she started taking flying lessons, but she did a lot more than that. She was a social worker, she was a nurse’s aide, she did stenography, photography, she was a truck driver.  

So in current day, we might refer to her as she had the hustle to make her dreams come true in order to afford her flying lessons. And in 1923, she was the 16th woman to get her pilot’s license. And that’s when I think her journey really, really started.  

From then on out she went on to meet George Putnam, her future husband, in 1931. And they met when he recruited her to participate in the friendship flight. And that’s really where she gained notoriety. And that was just as a passenger. She made it across the US, but then continued from then on out her transatlantic flight was in 1932, and that’s really when I think her fame started to peak.  

And when she earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, which was the first time that a female had earned that type of honor. And she went on to have more solo flights, three different flights going across the Pacific. She went from Honolulu to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Mexico City, Mexico City to Newark. All these different points, all continuing to be firsts. So, definitely a trailblazer and just more and more notoriety as her career progressed, and as she took more risks in her flying career.  

Why do you think Amelia kept pushing herself and pushing other women aviators forward?  

It was really, I would say, kind of a personal mission of Amelia to prove that women were just as capable of men. This was a time when many women were housewives, and she wanted to get women out of the kitchen and into the cockpit. She wanted to demonstrate that she could indeed have a career outside of marriage, and it was important to her to prove that. So with each first she took, she continued to cement that reality.  

That was very inspirational, but that doesn’t mean that it was easy. It was not easy at all. I think it’s important to level set that this was a time when flying was really dangerous. You had very rudimentary tools, the cockpit was very noisy, very, very loud.  

Just to give a couple moments of context when Amelia flew, you’re cruising altitude a lot of times was 10,000 feet. Whereas nowadays, it’s usually like anywhere from 30 to 42,000 feet. So you can imagine the turbulence that you are going to experience in those types of conditions, which takes an element of physical strength.  

And in that time too, there wasn’t any tools or anyone telling you that you were about ready to approach tough weather. So you had to make a call in that moment to either try to go around it or go through it. And those conditions posed lots and lots of different challenges along the way.  

And during her 1932 transatlantic flight, another example, is that she encountered a lot of bad weather. Which she made the flight, but ultimately her destination was supposed to be Paris, but instead she landed in Northern Ireland due to those weather complications. Even though it was successful, she had to pivot and make a different call, all of those things indicate how hard it was, how physical it had to be.  

So her trying to prove that equality, I think even more stands out to me of not only were you trying to achieve these firsts, but there was a lot of physical, mental, technological challenges that she had to overcome as a part of that journey.  

And at a time, too, when air races were gaining more and more notoriety, that was another challenge for her. She would enter these races and a lot of times the restrictions, the opportunities were different for men than they were for women, which she found very challenging and was very vocal about and openly shared her thoughts and opinions on how that was structured.  

But I think one of the most powerful examples of the biases that she was fighting at the time in 1935. So this would have been just a little bit prior to her around the world flight. There was actually a recommendation that was passed by the Civil Aeronautics Administration, which was the predecessor to the Federal Aviation Administration.  

That stated that women should not fly near or during their menstrual cycles because they could have fainting spells and it could cause fatal results. Like, can you even imagine that was an official recommendation.  

So despite all of– whether it be in an air race, whether it be these types of recommendations, she just kept persisting. And I think that definitely speaks to the strength of a Boilermaker in that essence, is that she just kept going, no matter the obstacle for what she believed in.  

Absolutely. And you and I are both Boilermakers. So I’m curious how Amelia came to Purdue and just her journey as a Boilermaker.  

Definitely well, she attended a conference with President Edward Elliott at the time in 1934 was called Women in the Changing World Conference. And it was really talking about how things were changing and they were both speakers.  

And the reason President Elliott was there, he was observing that women were enrolling at Purdue, but not many were finishing their degrees. And so they were choosing to get married, have children, go along that kind of traditional path. And he was really looking for solutions of how can I encourage women to continue their education and get their degrees.  

And when he saw Amelia, that was a perfect time to have a conversation, right? So he approached her and they talked about what would it look like for her to come to Purdue. Of course, at the time, we were the only University with an airport. So he knew he automatically had an item that she would be interested in.  

But above that, he took a pioneering approach. He proposed to her that she serve as a career counselor for women, and no other role was like that at a University, so really out of the box thinking. But that she could also be an advisor to the Department of Aeronautics and use her expertise to train students and advise faculty and those types of things.  

And they agreed to those terms and before she even stepped foot on campus, female enrollment at the University increased by 50%. Because at that point, she was a celebrity. People heard that she was going to be coming to Purdue, so more women enrolled in the University.  

And when she arrived, we have lots of photos in our archives of her sitting around talking with women, students at the time. About what is definitely noticeable in those photographs is that she’s wearing pants and she’s the only woman wearing pants. And that’s just another example of how she was kind of willing to go against the societal norms.  

We have photos walking across campus. Again, she’s the only one in pants other women are not. There’s these photos of her with just women gathered around her, listening to what she had to say. So she definitely had a voice and women responded.  

And one of the first things she did when she arrived on campus was survey women of why they were here and did they want a career. And 92% of them said yes. So it showed that the intent was there, just maybe needed more of what she was there to do. Encourage, mentor, council for them to find a way to complete their studies.  

So when she was here, she stayed at Windsor in Dombey Hall. She’d usually be here for a few weeks at a time because she had other endeavors. She worked in the Dean of Students and got to know Dorothy Stratten, which is another Purdue icon. Dorothy Stratten also worked with Helen Schliemann.  

So they continued to live out Amelia’s legacy even when she wasn’t with us anymore. And I would say that legacy is definitely still felt today. She was very passionate about helping women, about helping them see the possibilities and serving as a really valuable mentor.  

So in 1936, Amelia starts planning for this flight around the world. Purdue was helping her with that, and we’ll cover more of that in episode two. But walk us through a little bit of President Elliott and Purdue Research Foundation’s help with this planning of this flight.  

They were very supportive of the flight. President Elliott was very supportive of the flight, hoping with the flying laboratory, Purdue could take an active role. The Purdue Research Foundation helped fund the plane that she flew in that flight. So it’s origin started here at Purdue. Purdue had direct ties. And as I stated, she was hoping to eventually bring that plane back to Purdue University so that it could serve as a teaching tool. She knew the risks, she still wanted to move forward.  

And what I love is you go back and you can see this in multiple accounts. When people would ask, why do you want to take this flight? She would say, because I want to do it. And she would just leave it at that.  

And that’s pretty bold for a woman at that time to state such a short, succinct answer to not justify her decision, try to convince all the naysayers why, she just presented herself with astute confidence. This is something that she wanted to do. But I also think it’s really important to point out that even though she was confident, she wasn’t naive. She knew there were risks to this journey, that it was going to be really, really hard.  

Her navigator was Fred Noonan, and there was the times that they communicated some of the different things that they were experiencing that were tough. We talked earlier about how loud it was in the cockpit, and there are documents talking about her and Fred had to communicate using a stick and a piece of paper to go back and forth because you couldn’t even talk and communicate to each other in that environment.  

Now, that plane was modified with additional fuel tanks and all those types of things, as you can imagine, to get through that journey. That is how they communicated during that flight, was simply passing notes. She knew there were going to be challenges.  

And as they were going through that journey, they got to about 22,000 miles out of that 29,000 mile journey and started to experience radio issues, severe weather. This started to appear mainly as they were traveling to Howland Island. And there’s even some video evidence that when she was taking off from New Guinea, that they lost part of an antenna. The radio transmissions indicated that were trouble, which she knew could have happened. And I think that is really important to talk about.  

In fact, she left a letter for her husband that was to be opened in the event that she didn’t return it. And I just want to read it because I think it’s some really powerful words in her own voice. And again, this was to her husband, George Putnam.  

“Please know that I’m quite aware of the hazards of the trip. I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failures must be a challenge to others.” And those are just such powerful words. It shows she was bold, she was strong. But again, she was not naive of how this could have and unfortunately did play out.  

And to think that was in 1937, that quote is so central to her legacy. Why do you think Amelia, being a pioneering woman in this male dominated STEM field, continues to matter to Purdue today?  

I think the first example of why it matters to today, it’s something that’s still living and breathing her legacy on campus is the Ninety-Nine. She was a founding member, there’s still a chapter that’s very active at Purdue today.  

In fact, one of my favorite moments from the dedication of the Amelia Earhart terminal at the Purdue University airport last year was when the president of the Ninety-Nines addressed the group. And you could just hear Amelia’s influence in her comments and how much that Amelia’s legacy still is a living and breathing factor within that group today. So I think that chapter, that organization definitely represents her legacy.  

But then there’s other visible ways to particularly in the STEM fields. We have the Women in Science Group at Purdue University that’s really rooted in mentorship. So how those first year students coming in, partnering them with upperclassmen to form those relationships early, to help them navigate, to answer questions and just to be a resource, a point of encouragement.  

That same spirit is in the Women in Engineering Group. We have the first group like that in the nation at Purdue University, so it’s been around a really long time. And that group has the same spirit of mentoring, being there for women, encouraging them to pursue fields that are not primarily female driven. So being alongside of them and mentoring them.  

And that’s really what Amelia was all about during her time at Purdue University. And all that she was looking to accomplish, she was set out in to prove equality, to inspire others to see themselves and what she was doing. And so those programs here today at Purdue still represent that legacy.  

People have been searching for Amelia for nearly 90 years, and now we have the opportunity to embrace the challenge of recovering her plane. So it’s a really exciting time for Purdue University to wrap up her historic journey.  

I agree, it is a really exciting time. I mean, when I think about it, honestly, just gives me chills. We’ve talked a lot about the Taraia Object, which is the focal point of the expedition and all measurements, all indicators are really strongly aligned with her plane. But the reality is we just don’t know.  

And so somebody has to go there and take a look. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do. We’re really grateful to be along on the Archeological Legacy Institute’s expedition and bring our expertise, our knowledge of Amelia, our connections to the plane and of course, the many experts that we have here at Purdue University to take part in that expedition to go and see.  

And hopefully, it is her plane, and we can close the chapter. And we can do right by her– do right by her legacy, and bring the plane home just as she intended.  

Well, we can’t thank you enough for joining us today, Kelly, and walking us through the early days and Amelia’s historic journey as a Boilermaker too.  

For sure.  

Remember, you can tune in to Finding Amelia part two right now on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube. Part two covers more about the Purdue funded plane Amelia was flying when she disappeared on her around the world flight attempts in 1937.  

Chad Pittman, the president and CEO of Purdue Research Foundation, joins us to discuss Amelia’s flying laboratory and her plans to further aeronautical research after her around the world flight.  

Listen today, you can also learn more about this upcoming expedition at amelia.prf.org. Finding Amelia is a mini-series by This is Purdue, Purdue’s official University podcast. It’s brought to you by Purdue Brand Studio.  

The podcast is hosted and produced by me, Kate Young. The creative team behind the shows videography, design and writing and research includes: Thad Boone, Jon Garcia, Jason Doty, Cheryl Glotzbach, Ashvini Mulshi, John Underwood, and Dalani Young. Social media marketing is led by Maria Welch, and our project manager is Rain Gu.  

You can check out purdue.edu/podcast, to learn more and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

Amelia Earhart’s Purdue story began in 1935 and has captivated Boilermakers ever since. Just a few years after becoming the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, the celebrated aviator made even more history by coming to Purdue as the nation’s first career counselor for University Women and advisor to the Department of Aeronautics.  

Here, she pushed the boundaries as an educator and aviator, encouraging women to think differently about their lives after college and offering her expertise to faculty research efforts. The university later supported her 1937 attempt to become the first woman to fly around the world, including her dreams of advancing aeronautical research while on board.  

However, during that famed flight, Amelia, her navigator Fred Noonan, and the Purdue-funded Lockheed Electra 10E tragically disappeared while trying to reach Howland Island in the Southwestern Pacific Ocean. This disappearance has remained a mystery ever since.  

But now Purdue has the chance to solve this mystery. Nearly nine decades after Amelia’s disappearance in the South Pacific, Purdue University is working alongside the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue Research Foundation to identify her lost plane and help complete her historic journey.  

But what was special about this specific plane, and what were Amelia’s research and aviation goals when it came to flying this plane around the world, in this episode, we’re exploring the flying laboratory. Hi, I’m Kate Young, and you’re listening to Finding Amelia, a miniseries from This Is Purdue, the official podcast of Purdue University.  

During part 1 of Finding Amelia, we discussed who Amelia was as a person beyond being a famed aviator and Purdue advisor. So be sure to go back and listen to that first if you haven’t already. In this episode, we’re joined by Chad Pittman, the President and CEO of Purdue Research Foundation, to discuss this famed Lockheed Electra 10E airplane.  

See, Amelia had always planned on this Purdue-funded plane returning to its home in West Lafayette once her around-the-world flight was complete. However, she never returned, and neither did the plane. But Chad is sharing why we may be closer than ever to making that happen. This is part 2, Amelia Earhart’s Plane. Chad, thank you for joining us.  

Kate, thanks for having me in today.  

So let’s talk about Amelia’s plane. Why was it special? Why was it unique? And how did Purdue Research Foundation get involved?  

I’ll start with that first part. Purdue Research Foundation was formed in 1930s by David Ross and Josiah Lilly. And they formed it for the purposes of bridging the university and all of its capabilities, from research labs to, most importantly, the people inside the university, the faculty and the students, with industry. The idea was to match industry with its contemporary problems it was working on as part of that land grant mission of Purdue with the contemporary university faculty so that the faculty are working on most current problems and the industry gets the benefit of those solution sets.  

And I would say that this opportunity that Amelia Earhart brought in those early days was one of the early endeavors that has really anchored Purdue and set the foundation in its aviation prominence for the almost 100 years that PRF has been here.  

The way that the Amelia Earhart, and Purdue Research Foundation, and the Purdue University Act connected was, Amelia had just completed her Atlantic crossing and had become somewhat of an international celebrity. And she was doing speeches and giving presentations around the country and came across, at the time, Purdue President Edward Elliott, and then captured the imagination of David Ross and Josiah Lilly.  

David Ross, he was an incredible Greater Lafayette resident, inventor himself, and very accomplished businessperson. And he never had any kids. So his passion was Purdue. And he played a lot of roles at Purdue. But one thing that I think people often know about David Ross is the Ross-Ade stadium. One of the first things Research Foundation did was raise funding to help Amelia acquire the Lockheed Electra 10E that served as that flying laboratory. They raised, in today’s dollars, over a million dollars to make that mission possible, and then with all the intellectual talent at the university, again, with the contemporary industry, cutting-edge technologies to outfit her flying laboratory.  

So let’s dig into why the plane was outfitted the way it was, what were Amelia’s goals, and what did this flight mean to Purdue?  

For Purdue, it was a means to advance the technology to better understand the problem set with long-distance flying, but also capture the imagination of future aviators and people to join the aerospace industry to push the industry along. So I’ll focus first on the education mission of Purdue, and then we’ll get into the technology side.  

On the education mission, if you go back in time, it was before a lot of universities allowed women to even enter into STEM education. And Purdue was very ahead of its time in this space and understood, again, part of that land grant mission was to allow all people to have an opportunity to advance their skill sets to make an impact on humankind.  

But with Amelia, she was passionate to encourage and inspire young women that they too could have careers in the STEM field. When she wasn’t flying, she would live in residence halls here on campus. She would mentor and counsel female students, and help them along their career path, and encourage and again, inspire.  

On the technology side, she understood and the industry understood, in order to take this flight concept from more of a nascent capability that was maybe elusive to the common, average person, that a lot of innovations need to happen in distance flight.  

So one of those was having the technologies to really understand what is the impact on vibrations, and sound, and all those things on the flight crew and their ability to be focused and sustain longer hours of operation. One of the things they did, they soundproofed the cockpit. Another thing they did was testing fuel. And so they removed passenger seats to outfit it for more fuel tanks to gain range. Innovations like radio navigation technology was also something that Lockheed Electra 10E incorporated into its avionics. De-icing, another thing maybe we take for granted today, was another innovation that she incorporated into that platform.  

So again, a lot of those things at the time that we take for granted today. I mean, just think about, in the passenger compartments today, the fuselages, how relatively comfortable those experiences are for passengers, let alone the crew. Not the case in her time. These were cutting-edge things.  

Absolutely. It was very primitive then. They said that they did different experiments that involved the fatigue, the eye strain, even testing how you could fly under the influence of alcohol, right?  

Yeah, that’s right. I would imagine things like the appropriate amount of crew rest to hours flying, I bet you could see the foundational data in that. Turns out if people are sleeping just out of sheer exhaustion, risk is greatly up. But what is that right amount of trade-offs.  

Absolutely. So before her tragic disappearance, what were Amelia’s plans for the plane after her around-the-world attempt?  

Yep. So one of the things that Amelia wanted to do was use this trip– besides the learning from the scientific laboratory experiments, in essence, that they were conducting, was to use it as a catalyst to inspire new innovations and recruit great minds to want to pursue the solutions to the problems that were limiting aviation at the time.  

One of her goals was to use this plane as a centerpiece to drive the conversation to inspire. And the goal was to bring that back to Purdue and use it as a centerpiece here to inspire people to come visit. Purdue is the first university to have its own airport and leverage that asset in a way that maybe couldn’t be done in other places. And that certainly would have been a centerpiece of that story.  

So fast forward to today, how does PRF support aviation, and how is the work being done by PRF furthering aeronautical research overall?  

Yeah, so kind of exciting. My predecessor, almost 100 years ago, would have been maybe sitting in a radio station or something like that, I don’t know, but having a similar conversation perhaps. And here we are today. The Purdue Research Foundation is the organization for Purdue that is, in essence, chartering this mission, similar to in those days. We’re still involved in those things. We’re still involved in the Amelia Earhart Expedition to try to help her conclude at least the journey of that airplane to circumnavigate the world, hopefully, but also continue to tell that story.  

Other things that Purdue Research Foundation is doing in aviation as we continue that mission. We do it differently today, I’m pretty sure, than we did in 1935 or ’36, ’37. As the world’s evolved, we have internet and all kinds of stuff that they did not have. But the mission hasn’t changed. That mission to bridge and connect the industry, capture imaginations, drive technology, get those technologies into the hands of folks that will do great things with it.  

Today, if you go out and buy the airport in the Discovery Park District, you will see a Rolls Royce facility in which testing is done in development by our partners at Rolls Royce on different modules to help fuel engines at all kinds of different environments. And that testing, evaluation, and development is happening every day just right there on campus. I’m sure Amelia would have liked to be able to do that ground testing before she was in the air to mitigate some of the challenges.  

We have a new Rolls Royce facility that is opening up right now. It’s a one-of-a-kind facility to do propulsion testing at incredible scale right across from Zucrow Labs in Saab. If you continue down the road there, you’ll be on your way back to the Zucrow Labs. You’ll see a Saab facility that they make fighter jet trainers for the military. Again, state-of-the-art innovation how they manufacture the materials, the processes to deliver, again, those capabilities to train future aviators right there in our own park.  

So those are just a few of the ways that PRF is still involved in bridging. We could talk about the SK Hynix project, how does that relate to aviation. Well, they’ll be packaging the state-of-the-art high-bandwidth memory chips in the world here in a couple of years that will allow the processing powers to solve problems that were unimaginable to solve 100 years ago, let alone today. So all that ties together. And our mission, again, hasn’t changed, to bridge talent and problems on both sides of the academy and industry.  

OK, so thanks for walking us through the details about Amelia’s plane. But I think the big question on everyone’s mind is, what happens if this plane is recovered in the search efforts?  

Yeah. So there’s a lot of ifs in that, if it’s the object that could potentially be, if it can be recovered and moved and so forth. There’s a lot of unknowns, right? Which makes it exciting, makes it an adventure. There’s two things I want to address with this, is, one, if they find it and if it can be relocated, a goal would be to relocate it here, per Amelia’s original vision, again, to serve as a centerpiece of telling part of the aviation history story and Purdue’s story in it.  

But I’ll tell you the other thing, too, is I think this mission is a success as soon as they push off. And I was meeting with the team in Eugene, Oregon, about a month or so ago. I know that for them, they are obviously determined that this is the object and to be able to recover it and all those things.  

And what I’ve encouraged them is, just like Amelia Earhart, and like any great adventure, when they get on that landing craft, sail four or five days into the unknown to go onto an island, which is very hard to get to. And if they confirm it’s her plane, success. If they don’t, well, we’re a step closer to understanding. There’ll be a lot of other things that are learned in that mission. And when they get back onto the landing craft to return on their way back, they should feel very good about however this story plays out.  

I’m very excited that this will be a successful mission regardless of what the object is or isn’t. I know we’re all very confident that it has a lot of the elements to be Amelia’s airplane. But nonetheless, what has driven PRF to do, how it’s made us better, I think those are all things that Amelia would say her trip did continues to inspire us to think differently, to think about using satellite imagery and stuff. A little bit of her innovations made it possible to have satellites to image the actual object so we can get out there.  

Yes. And we owe it to Amelia and to her legacy to go search and find out, right?  

That’s right.  

Thank you so much for joining us today. Chad, is there anything I missed?  

No, I appreciate you telling the story. I know Amelia would appreciate it. And I think what you’re doing here is to, again, get that story out. And hopefully, a few people learn this and maybe inspires them to pursue careers in STEM, pursue careers in storytelling, and be a part of the aviation future of our country and our world. Thank you.  

I love that. Thank you. Remember, you can tune in to Finding Amelia part 3 right now on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube. Our third episode takes listeners on a journey through the world’s largest compilation of Amelia-related papers, memorabilia, and artifacts at Purdue University Archives and Special Collections.  

Katey Watson, the France A. Córdova archivist, joins us for this special conversation. Listen to part 3 today. You can also learn more about this upcoming expedition at amelia.prf.org.  

[STIRRING MUSIC]  

Finding Amelia is a miniseries by This Is Purdue, Purdue’s official university podcast. It’s brought to you by Purdue Brand Studio. The podcast is hosted and produced by me, Kate Young. The creative team behind the shows videography, design, and writing and research includes Thad Boone, Jon Garcia, Jason Doty, Cheryl Glotzbach, Ashvini Malshe, John Underwood, and Dalani Young. Social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. And our project manager is Rain Gu. You can check out Purdue.edu/podcasts to learn more and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

In 1937, Amelia Earhart attempted to become the first woman to fly around the Earth’s equator, an incredibly courageous, unprecedented goal in those early days of aviation. At the same time, she was also Purdue’s first career counselor to women, an advisor to the Department of Aeronautics. About 3/4 of the way through her journey, Amelia tragically disappeared, along with her navigator, Fred Noonan, and her Purdue-funded Lockheed Electra 10-E.  

It’s a mystery that’s captivated generations. But now, Purdue is setting out to find answers. Nearly nine decades after Amelia’s disappearance, Purdue University is working alongside the Archeological Legacy Institute and Purdue Research Foundation to identify her lost plane and help complete her historic journey after finding new evidence that an object near Nikumaroro island in the Western Pacific Ocean may be the missing plane.  

Amelia’s goal was always to return the plane to Purdue, where she found a sense of purpose in her work. In fact, she loved Purdue and appreciated its generosity towards her flight so much that her husband, George Putnam, donated thousands of her personal items to the University in 1940 after her disappearance. In 2002, her granddaughter, Sally Putman Chapman, donated even more. Today, Purdue is home to the world’s largest compilation of Amelia-related papers, memorabilia and artifacts, making it one of the top destinations to research the legendary aviator’s life.  

But what are some of these unique historic items? And how do they inspire people today? In this episode, we’re examining some of the rare artifacts and memorabilia that are part of Purdue’s Amelia Earhart collection. Hi, I’m Kate Young, and you’re listening to Finding Amelia, a miniseries from This is Purdue, the official podcast of Purdue University.  

During part 2 of Finding Amelia, we explored her famed airplane, nicknamed the “flying laboratory,” and the Purdue Research Foundation support of her around the world flight attempt. Check out that episode first, if you haven’t already. In this episode, we’re joined by Katie Watson, the France A. Cordova archivist of Purdue Archives and Special Collections, who manages Purdue’s Amelia Earhart collection.  

Katie is helping us pull back the curtain on the personal items Amelia left behind, including her famous Aviator goggles, leather flight helmet, and brown suede jacket, all of which are part of Purdue’s incredible collection. Plus, we’re diving into why Amelia’s husband, George, along with his granddaughter, Sally, chose to donate these significant historical items to Purdue. This is part 3, uncovering Amelia Earhart’s rare artifacts and memorabilia.  

[MUSIC PLAYING]  

Welcome, Katie. It’s so great to have you. Thanks for coming.  

Thanks so much. I’m excited to talk to you about the collection.  

I think you’re going to bring to light a lot of things that Amelia Earhart’s even biggest fans and people who respect her don’t know. So I’m really excited for this conversation. I think it’s really cool, too. Purdue is home to the world’s largest collection of Amelia Earhart papers, so you’re here to tell us more about that. Tell us about this collection and a little bit about your role here at Purdue.  

In Amelia Earhart papers that we have here at Purdue, we have about 5,000 items. This is one of the collections that I oversee. I oversee the women’s archives, which is a special collecting area at the Purdue University Archives and Special Collections. So I oversee about 200 collections. The Amelia Earhart papers, as I mentioned. So we have about 5,000 items that belong to Amelia Earhart.  

We received the vast majority of these in 1940 from her husband, George Palmer Putnam, but his stipulation was that he really wanted a place that would safeguard and care for the collections to make sure that they lasted as long as possible, but also to ensure that they could be made available for research use. And so the Purdue Libraries and Archives has been doing that ever since 1940.  

And tell us about, later, George Putnam’s granddaughter, Sally Putman Chapman, donated more items to archives.  

Yeah. So in 2002, Sally Putnam Chapman donated about, I think it was 492 additional items. And so these were more of Amelia’s personal papers, like poems, childhood notes, also the famed prenuptial agreement between Amelia Earhart and George Palmer Putnam.  

Wow.  

Yeah. And so that’s really interesting. So in it– so this was just before they got married, so 1931. And in it, she kind of lays out some expectations for the relationship. She didn’t want to be bound to a medieval code of faithfulness during the relationship. She wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t interfere with each other’s work because she did have a very promising and robust career. And one thing I also found really interesting about it is she says that if they didn’t find happiness together in a year, that they would let each other go. But obviously, they did, as they were together until her disappearance.  

Wow that is fascinating.  

Yeah. And we do have another collection, too. We have a collection of papers related to her time at Purdue. These didn’t come from the Putnams. They were actually found at the Purdue University Airport, which is where she planned her world flight. In that collection, we have correspondence between Amelia Earhart, George Palmer Putnam, and President Elliott. We have speeches that she gave on campus. We have itineraries from her visits here and a lot of photographs of her on campus as well.  

OK, Katie, let’s dig into the collection itself. Tell us about some of the most historically significant items. I’d love for you to share some of your personal favorites as well.  

I think some of her most iconic items that we have are the artifacts, particularly those that are related to her flying career. We have her goggles. One pair of her flight goggles are from– we really don’t have that much information about them. They’re from about the 1930s, and we have a couple photographs of her wearing them. They are also one of the most fragile artifacts that we have in the collection.  

We also have two of her pilot’s licenses, one from 1928 and one from 1930s, though she actually got her pilot’s license back in 1923. In a couple sources, you’ll see her credited as being the first US woman pilot to receive a pilot’s license from the National Aeronautic Association, though she was definitely not the first woman pilot in the US to earn a pilot’s license. The first one is Harriet Quimby in 1911.  

Some of my favorite, but also the materials a lot of people are most interested in, are some of those artifacts from her 1932 solo Atlantic flight. So we have her leather flight helmet that she wore on that flight as well. We have smelling salts, which she would use to keep herself awake during the flight. The flight started in Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, and she landed in Londonderry, Ireland in 1932. The flight took just under 15 hours, so she had to stay awake for that entire time since she was doing it by herself.  

We also have a passport that she had signed when she arrived in London, England, and then we also have her suede jacket and pants as well, which she wore on that flight. Those would have been worn underneath her flight suit.  

OK.  

We also have her flying log, which is really interesting. She would take notes throughout the flight. And as you know, there were a couple issues that she ran into during that flight. She was obviously exhausted. She was nauseous. She had a leaky fuel tank. She also had a crack in the manifold on her plane that started spewing flames at one point during the flight. So in this flight log, there’s a couple times she notes some issues that she was coming up against. So in one part she states that if anyone finds this wreck, please know that I got lost because of the storm.  

She also writes just that she was exhausted and that she had to crawl near the water for hours because she was scared of the flames coming out near her engine. So it must have been a really terrifying flight. But it’s so fascinating to have that firsthand documentation of her experience during that flight.  

So you have a pair of her trousers as well? I want to touch on that because when she was at Purdue, women back then were expected to wear skirts and dresses. Tell us about the significance of her wearing trousers and what that meant to the women at Purdue at the time.  

It was pretty typical for female pilots to wear them while flying, but she wore them off plane all the time as well. On campus, she’d wear her slacks here. And as you mentioned, it was pretty atypical at the time. We have video interview with Dean Emerita Dorothy Stratton, who was Dean of women at the time that Earhart was here. And she recalls that when Amelia started here, she’d be seen wearing trousers across campus, and then women students would start wearing trousers on campus as well, which was really not typical at the time.  

There were some other great stories that she recounts as well, just like Amelia’s influence on students on campus, particularly women students. When she was here, she stayed at Duhme residence hall, and in some of the residence halls, they’d have these formal dinners all together. During the dinners, women students weren’t allowed to have their elbows on the table– it was like an etiquette thing, so elbows off the table– while Amelia Earhart always sat with her elbows on the table listening to students.  

And so some of the women students went to the Director of the residence halls at the time, Helen Schliemann, were like, well, Ms Earhart has her elbows on the table. Why can’t we? And the response that they got was, well, when you fly solo across the Atlantic, you can put your elbows on the table.  

Wow, I love that story.  

Yeah. Everything that Amelia Earhart did on campus, the women students wanted to do as well.  

She was just so respected and revered here on campus.  

Yeah, she was really, really influential.  

So I know there’s different poems, there’s news clippings, there’s photos. Dig into some of those papers and artifacts within the collection as well.  

Yeah, sure. So Amelia Earhart was an amateur poet, so we do have a fair amount of her poems that she wrote. She did submit some of these to Poetry magazine and other magazines under a pseudonym, Emil Hart. And this was before she was famous. I think this was like the early 1920s. Unfortunately, none of those were published. The only published poem that we have or that she had published was Courage, and that was in 1928 after the friendship flight.  

But we do have several other really interesting paper-based documents that are some of my favorites. We have a questionnaire from women students. So when she first got here, one of the very first things that she did in her position as career counselor for women was to survey the students about their career aspirations– so the women students. She sent out this survey to get feedback on whether or not women students were planning on pursuing a career after graduating. Wasn’t necessarily typical at the time.  

A lot of women would get married during the degree or right after, and then wouldn’t go into whatever field that they were studying. She asked what their aspiration was like, what job they were interested in, whether they would continue that job after getting married, and then also, whether they thought that if they were working and their husband was also working, whether they should share household responsibilities equitably.  

Which was not common back then.  

No, not at all. She collated– compiled– all of this survey data. And in 1935, Purdue had its first career conference for women here at the University, and she reported back on some of this data. So 92% of women did say that they were planning on pursuing a career after getting their degree. The most common reasons for why they wanted to do this were personal interest. They wanted to find a career that they were really interested in, but also financial necessity was another one.  

But during this talk to women students, she also made sure to encourage them to pursue careers that they wanted, not what was expected of them. So one thing that Amelia Earhart mentions throughout a lot of her papers is that people should pursue careers that they’re interested in, or have an aptitude for. That career shouldn’t be defined based on your gender. And so that’s something that she really encouraged the students to do in her time here.  

I love this storytelling around what she did here on campus at Purdue. There’s so many nuggets to dig into there.  

Yeah, there really is. And then another one of my favorite items are the materials that she sent back during her world flight. So one thing that I didn’t realize before working here at Purdue Archives was that during her world flight, her and Putnam were actually planning on writing a book about the world flight. So throughout the trip and stops that she made, she was taking notes and taking photographs and sending them back to George.  

And so we have all of those. We have notes and photographs up until her very last stop in Lae, New Guinea. And so we have the notes of her experience. We have candid shots, some that are kind of like touristy shots. So she took photographs of the landscape and the people that she met. We even have a photograph of her riding a camel in India that I think is really cool.  

Amazing, wow. What about some of the photography that included her taking off for this around-the-world flight attempt?  

We have a lot of photographs from campus of when she got her Lockheed Electra, also with her students. We have photographs of her taking off on the first attempt in Hawaii and then the second attempt as well. So those are some of our most highly requested materials.  

OK. So let’s dig into some of those news clippings. At this point, Amelia was world famous when she was attempting to fly around the world. What kind of items and clippings and papers does the Purdue Archives Collection have when it comes to that?  

We have about 22 scrapbooks that contain newspaper clippings from the early 1920s up until her disappearance in 1937. So these are all digitized and available online, and they mostly include articles about her various flights, about her career at Purdue, and of course, about the world flight as well.  

So many people use this special collection to this day– historians, writers, students. You and I were talking before this, and you said, since this expedition was announced, you’ve gotten many more inquiries, too. So tell us a little bit about all the people who get to use this, see it, utilize it as a resource.  

Since the expedition was announced, we’ve had an uptick in research requests, requests for photographs, interview requests with our archivists. So it’s been really fascinating to learn more about the things that people are interested in. But even before this, the Earhart collection is really one of our most highly used collections in the archives. That just this past year we have digitized the vast majority of the materials within her papers, and those are available online.  

In the past year, we’ve had about 90,000 views of those materials online. We also field dozens of research requests every year, photo requests from a wide variety of researchers. We’re contacted by historians, documentary filmmakers, reporters, from people at the Purdue Exponent up to national news organizations like NPR. One thing that I find really interesting is we work with artists. So composers or visual artists who look at parts of her career as inspiration for their artwork. We work with children’s authors, as well as many students from grade school up to graduate students as well.  

Yeah. I think that’s super important because Amelia’s legacy is felt on campus here still, but also across the world. You talked about children’s books. It spanned so many generations at this point.  

Yeah. Her impact is still felt around the world as well. So one thing that I find really fascinating is every year, I’ll get at least one or two people from another country, students usually, who are doing a project on somebody who inspired them, and they’re reaching out to get an interview about and find out more about Amelia Earhart and her career. And that has happened every year since I started here six years ago.  

OK, Katie. So you were just saying that researchers are reaching out, students, people from all across the world. Have there been any kind of misconceptions about Amelia as a person that you’ve noticed throughout all these requests?  

I wouldn’t necessarily say misconceptions, though I think everyone interprets things a little differently. But also, I have read from a couple different people that they interpreted the world flight as George Palmer Putnam pushing her to go into the world flight. But there’s this really great note that we have in her papers where she writes to George about the reason why she wanted to go on the world flight.  

And in it, she writes that she’s completely aware of the risks and dangers of it and that she wants to do it because she wants to do it. It’s one of her dreams. And that if anything happens to her on it, it should just be a challenge to other people to try it as well. And so I think that’s one of the misconceptions that I’ve come across.  

That’s a great example. You’ve had the opportunity to read and pore through all of these different papers and personal artifacts. How do you feel about Amelia and her legacy and who she was as a Boilermaker?  

I think for me, particularly with the area that I oversee– the women’s archives– she really was a strong advocate for women. For women to have financial independence, for women to pursue careers that they were interested in. She spoke in many different avenues, encouraging women to do what they were interested in.  

She had such a non-traditional career for a woman at the time, and that’s really something that she just repeatedly during these public events, public speeches, and articles was really encouraging women to do as well. And we still hear from students today, women students in the Aeronautics program, that she’s still one of the inspirations and people that they felt encouraged them into these careers.  

That’s incredible. I just think it’s so cool that Purdue Archives has this rich collection of artifacts from so many iconic people– Neil Armstrong, Amelia, so many others. So thank you so much for joining us today and walking us through this.  

Yeah, of course. And I mean, we have a lot of big names at Purdue, but we have so much more, too. So the archives has over 1,300 collections with thousands of documents from various alumni, faculty, staff, students, student organizations, programs on campus. So it’s such a great career and job because you’re just learning something new every day.  

Where can people find more, view some of these incredible items?  

So on our website, we have descriptions of our collections. We’ve digitized a lot of materials as well, so those are freely available online. Just Purdue University Archives and Special Collections should pull up our web page and you can learn a lot.  

Katie, what is this expedition mean to you within your role at Purdue and as a Boilermaker yourself?  

Really interested to see what comes of it. And it would be so great to actually find out what happened to her. It’s been such a mystery and would really just put that final puzzle piece of her life into place. So I’m really interested and hopeful to see what comes from it.  

Absolutely. Well, we can’t thank you enough for joining us. It’s been a total pleasure.  

Well, thanks so much for having me.  

Remember, you can tune in to Finding Amelia part 4 right now on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube. Our fourth episode of this miniseries covers more about the search for Amelia’s plane and why people are still looking for answers to this decades-old mystery. We’ll be having an exciting conversation with Steve Schultz, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Purdue, who will be joining the expedition to potentially identify Amelia’s lost plane. Listen today. You can also learn more about this upcoming expedition on amelia.prf.org.  

And if you’d like to check out the Purdue University Archives and Special Collections Amelia Earhart collection, we have that link for you in our show notes. Finding Amelia is a miniseries by This is Purdue, Purdue’s official University podcast. It’s brought to you by Purdue Brand Studio. The podcast is hosted and produced by me, Kate Young.  

The creative team behind the shows videography, design and writing, and research includes Thad Boone, Jon Garcia, Jason Doty, Cheryl Glotzbach, Ashvini Malshe, John Underwood, and Dalani Young. Social media marketing is led by Maria Welch, and our project manager is Rain Gu. You can check out purdue.edu/podcast to learn more and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

For nearly a century, Amelia Earhart’s story has lived at the intersection of history, mystery, and legend. In 1937, a period where she worked at Purdue as the nation’s first career advisor to women, having already become an international celebrity by flying across the Atlantic, Amelia attempted to become the first woman to fly around the world. Though she disappeared during this flight, along with her navigator Fred Noonan and her Lockheed Electra 10-E, her aviation breakthroughs and bravery have inspired generations to follow in her footsteps, and the mystery of her disappearance continues to capture public interest and launch search expeditions.  

But now Purdue may be closer than ever to finally finding answers. Nearly nine decades after Amelia’s disappearance in the South Pacific, Purdue University is working alongside the Archaeological Legacy Institute and Purdue Research Foundation to identify her lost plane and help complete her historic journey. Now, a search team will set off an expedition with the goal of locating and analyzing suspected plane wreckage near the Pacific island of Nikumaroro. This is roughly 400 miles southeast of Howland Island, where Amelia was heading when she disappeared.  

What makes this new search different from those in the past? What challenges will the team face? And how does it feel to have the eyes of the world watching their every move? In this episode, we’re getting the details of the search for Amelia’s plane that could change everything directly from a Purdue Boilermaker who will be on the trip. Hi, I’m Kate Young, and you’re listening to Finding Amelia, a miniseries from This Is Purdue, the official podcast of Purdue University.  

During part three of Finding Amelia, we took a deep dive into the world’s largest compilation of Amelia Earhart-related papers, memorabilia, and artifacts, which is maintained by Purdue Archives and Special Collections. Be sure to go back and listen to that first if you haven’t already. In this final episode of the series, we’re joined by Steve Schultz, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Purdue University.  

Steve will be a research assistant on the expedition to search for Amelia’s plane. If all goes according to plan, he might have a first-hand role in helping to solve one of the greatest mysteries of all time. Steve actually broke the news about the expedition on The Today Show back in 2025, so he’s the perfect person to cap off our series and dive into this upcoming incredible journey. He’s also going to explain why the initial search was postponed, the obstacles the team had to overcome to make this trip a reality, and why Purdue is more determined than ever to complete this search to add to Amelia’s legacy. This is part four, The Search for Amelia Earhart’s Missing Plane.  

[MUSIC PLAYING]  

Steve, welcome.  

Thanks, Kate. It’s good to see you.  

Good to see you. Now, we discussed this with Kelly Hiller in episode one, but there were some pivots that the team had to make between last year and right now. But a search team, including yourself, will be traveling to Kiribati to explore if the Taraia Object is indeed Amelia’s plane. So let’s dive into some of the pivots that you all had to make. I know it wasn’t always easy.  

Sure. Well, we’ll start from where we last paused, I guess, our effort. We were planning to depart from Marshall Islands, actually, on November 4 last year. It was right at the end of the safe window to go to that part of the South Pacific in terms of weather and sea conditions. And right down to the 11th hour, we thought everything was a go, and then we realized that our research permit to go to Nikumaroro had not come through in time. It was in process, but we ran out of time for us to get the final approval. And then we pressed pause, and regrouped, and rededicated ourselves to planning the process for this year.  

Over the course of the winter months, we realized that it wasn’t just going to be enough to get the clearance from the research permit committee, something called the NRCC, in the country of Kiribati we’re dealing with. But this was a project of such significance to the country of Kiribati that we actually needed a higher level approval, and that was from the cabinet level, which is their highest form of government. They have a president, but the president is a member of the cabinet. It’s pretty much like the British system of government.  

And so with the help of some very great folks at the State Department, and specifically our Fiji embassy, we started conversations and essentially tried to get an audience with any cabinet ministers who would listen to us, who would come to understand who Purdue University is, our relationship to Archaeological Legacy Institute and Dr. Pettigrew, but more importantly, what Amelia meant to us and what we could do together to benefit Kiribati.  

And so eventually, in April, we were invited to go to Tarawa, the capital of Kiribati, and we had an eventful dinner there where we laid the groundwork for a proposal essentially, explaining just exactly what we were going to do. And, by the way, our premise is very straightforward. We’ll talk about that.  

It’s a science project. We’re going to look at something very specific on that island, and that’s really what we’re asking for permission to do. But we also couched it in terms of a larger collaboration with Kiribati, one that maybe could last generations depending on what we find there. And so on the basis of that, the cabinet ministers with whom we established this collaboration took it forward. And ultimately, we received word in the middle of July that we got cabinet approval.  

Amazing. And I think it’s important. Here we are a year later, doing exactly what we said we were going to do. And you all are going to explore if the Taraia Object is indeed Amelia’s plane.  

That’s right. That’s right.  

So let’s dive into the evidence that has been uncovered so far.  

Sure. We are building our efforts on prior work principally by a group called TIGHAR, which stands for the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery, an organization founded and led by someone named Rick Gillespie, based in Wilmington, Delaware. They got a clue in the late 1980s. They were already a nonprofit that specialized in finding and identifying lost aircraft.  

But they got a clue from a couple of gentleman in Florida who suggested that a new theory might be looked at. The prevailing theories of what happened to Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan were, of course, the official line, which is the– let’s just call it the crash-and-sink theory. That is what the US Navy and Coast Guard concluded after the exhaustive more than two-week search for them in the first half of July 1937, after their disappearance on July 2, 1937.  

Another theory has become popular, and you can see it in YouTube videos and other documentaries. And that’s essentially the Japanese capture theory that they were apprehended by Japanese bent on occupying some of those islands and they were taken to Saipan, where they were subsequently executed. So that’s the Japanese capture theory. That one has pretty much been debunked in recent years and certainly doesn’t have the evidence that our theory has.  

So back to the TIGHAR story. So the clue was that we think you ought to look at the very last radio transmission that was heard from Amelia and Fred in the morning of July 2, around 8:45 in the morning. They said, we’re flying north and south on the line 137, 557.  

Now, what is that? Turns out that that’s a line of position– roughly a longitudinal line– running northwest to southeast. And if you follow that line dissecting Howland Island, which they were trying to find, and follow in that direction on that line of position, in about 400 miles, it runs directly into Nikumaroro Island, which was then called Gardner Island. So the theory was that Amelia and Fred would have had enough fuel to make it to Nikumaroro.  

And Niku is sort of a classic South Pacific atoll. It’s got a very high reef that rims it. And at low tide, the reef flat sort of resembles a tarmac. And so the theory is that they actually landed on dry ground on Nikumaroro and essentially became castaways there and later succumbed to the elements. There’s a theory that Fred may have been injured in the landing and subsequent attempt to get on shore from the reef. That’s based on some things that were heard on radio transmissions.  

So that takes us back to TIGHAR and the case that they’ve built. Since 1989, they’ve really built what I consider as a lawyer to be an incredible circumstantial case– different types of evidence that they’ve collected to support this hypothesis. Pretty convincing. So, for example, in addition to the line of position argument, there were radio direction bearings that were taken on the radio communications that were heard in the days following the July 2 disappearance.  

Radio stations at Midway on Wake Island and in Honolulu, operated by both US Navy and Pan Am Airways, heard these transmissions and through radio direction bearing technology were able to track the direction from which they were coming. If you look at a majority of those that are found to be the most compelling, three of them converge directly in the vicinity of Nikumaroro Island– again, then called Gardner Island. So that’s the bearings evidence and is contemporaneous evidence because it was collected at the time.  

In addition, there were actual shortwave radio transmissions where people in the United States swore that they heard Amelia talking over the radio in those days after July 2. Betty Klenck was a young 15-year-old in St. Petersburg, Florida, whose dad had a souped-up shortwave radio. And for 90 minutes, she wrote in her diary things that no person, let alone a 15-year-old girl, could have made up that can really be traced to things that Amelia Earhart would have said. So that’s also compelling evidence.  

And TIGHAR has done a great job of collecting all that as part of its case. In fact, Betty Klenck, who’s since passed away, was living in nearby Hoopeston, Illinois, just across the border from here, in her 80s. And she was interviewed by TIGHAR. And she said, finally, somebody’s listening to me, because this is exactly what I was hearing on the radio.  

In addition, over the course of their visits to the island, they found artifacts, including a freckle cream jar from the 1930s. Amelia was famously embarrassed about her freckles. They found rouge from a compact case. They found a compact case dating from the 1930s, pieces of a blucher shoe of the type that Amelia wore, a zipper that very closely matches the vintage of her flight jacket and the type of zipper that was on that flight jacket, an Art Deco-style flashlight from the 1930s, arguably of the type that would have been on the plane.  

And this is the most compelling to me, but a medicine vial, again, from the 1930s era that has a metal cap. Back then, they didn’t have the plastic press-on caps, but metal clasps that went over an elongated glass vial. And the first syllable of the cap is smudged out, but it says U-C-A Pharmacy. So the first part of the first word smudged out. She lived in Toluca Lakes, Los Angeles, before her departure. And there still is a Toluca Pharmacy in the Valley, in North Hollywood.  

Wow.  

Yeah.  

Wow.  

And there’s more, by the way, but that’s some of the main pieces of artifact evidence. In addition, bones were found on the island in 1940. And these were documented in an osteologist report that was lost to history until TIGHAR dug it up in the files of the British Colonial Office that maintained the files of its colonies that never quite took off. And, by the way, this was the last place in the world that the British tried to colonize. Between 1945, after the war, and 1963, they actually tried to establish a coconut growing plantation on the island, and that was something called the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme.  

In any event, those files were lost, and TIGHAR dug those up 60 miles north of London. And, sure enough, there was a file– bones discovered on Gardner Island. And a 2017 or ’18 study by a professor at the University of Tennessee found that the dimensions reflected in that report– and, by the way, he looked at pictures of Amelia and pictures of her clothes from the Purdue archives and concluded that they were a very close match to Amelia.  

Wow, that is fascinating.  

And so now we have the Taraia Object itself, which we can describe, but essentially it’s a visual anomaly along a landmass in a lagoon of this South Pacific atoll, Nikumaroro. And that landmass is called the Taraia Peninsula. It was discovered in 2020 during COVID by someone who was an aficionado of this castaway hypothesis and looking on Apple Maps and said, what is that along the shore of the lagoon?  

And sure enough, he took it to Dr. Rick Pettigrew, who initially took a half-hearted interest in it, as Rick tells the story, but later became pretty interested in it– and, again, combined with all the other evidence that TIGHAR had brought to bear over the years. And Rick went back and actually curated images of that spot in the lagoon going back to 2015. He’s since then put together an animation video showing the gradual appearance of the object from 2015 through the present day. It gradually appears, and then it disappears.  

Now, why would that be the case? The reason, we believe, is that it traces back to a very serious tropical storm– Tropical Cyclone Pam– that actually happened in the early spring of 2015. We believe that the storm surge from Tropical Cyclone Pam swooshed into the lagoon and washed the sediment– brushed the sediment off the object, and then it gradually accumulated again over the years. But there’s lots of reasons that we believe that the object is the electorate.  

Yeah, for nearly nine decades, there have been many search attempts. And so why do you all think that this is the one that will get it right?  

Right. So probably the biggest search attempt was the largest search-and-rescue mission in American history. I actually went to find this because I was curious how much it cost the United States to conduct that search for more than half a month in July 1937. So that involved initially a search by the US Coast Guard cutter Itasca. That was the cutter that was sitting off Howland Island, which was, again, their target. They were going to refuel in Howland and then head to Hawaii the next day.  

And the Itasca immediately began searching for her when they lost radio contact. It was soon joined by the USS Colorado, which had some planes that it launched and flew over the neighboring islands and searched the sea around Howland. And then later, the USS Lexington joined, and it had something like 65 planes that essentially, over the course of that 16-day period or so, they searched an area the size of Texas and did not find a trace of them.  

It cost $4 million at the time, and that’s $93 million in today’s money, because everybody loved Amelia and she was friends with the Roosevelts. So there was a huge outpouring in an attempt to find her. And, by the way, a huge impact when everybody realized she was lost, including here at Purdue. The records show that President Elliott and, obviously, the whole campus community was devastated by her loss. So that was the first attempt.  

And then later efforts have been really devoted– until the Nikumaroro hypothesis have been devoted to what are called deep-sea searches. Those are based, of course, on the crash-and-sink theory. The most recent ones were by Deep Sea Vision, a firm that thought that it identified, through some satellite imagery and some sonar technology, something very deep below the surface, a few hundred miles from Howland. That was announced in 2024. Upon further investigation, that ended up being a rock outcropping at the bottom of the ocean. And so that was Tony O. Romeo and Deep Sea Vision.  

And then more recently and concurrently, really, with our efforts, another deep sea theory is being searched by a company called Nauticos. And what they have done is they’ve tried to narrow that search field. So no longer thinking that we have to look around an area the size of the state of Texas. Let’s narrow that. Let’s mimic the technology that Amelia and Fred would have had. And using that, let’s try to identify a more narrow area of the ocean where they would have gone down. So they’re working on that. They’re raising funds. And that’s a competing theory right now.  

But in terms of the other efforts, I would say, for example, all of the TIGHAR efforts over its 12 or so expeditions to Nikumaroro, those have actually been successful because each in succession has added more evidence to the case. And now with the Taraia Object, which we believe could be the smoking gun, we think that Purdue owes it to Amelia and her legacy to follow the evidence where it leads us.  

Absolutely. So let’s dive into the expedition. You are going to be there with this group. How do you feel about potentially being there if they find the plane? What does that feel like to you?  

It’ll be incredible. It’s hard to describe what it will be like having a front row seat at solving one of the great mysteries in world history, certainly of the 20th century. Just in terms of my personal opportunity to be involved, it came about by happenstance. Why in the world is the lawyer for Purdue and Purdue Research Foundation going on this? So I’ve been representing Purdue and PRF for 13 and 1/2 years, but I never thought I’d be an explorer on their behalf.  

But essentially, that comes down to my being tasked over the years with going into the archives and confirming or evaluating what our claim to the plane would be if and when it were ever found. And so every time we’d get one of these claims, Mitch, and then later Mung, would say, go double check. And, of course, I always had to return to the historical record, which I think you’ve covered in a different episode, which is Purdue Research Foundation gave her the money free and clear. She then used that to develop the plane with Lockheed, her flying laboratory.  

And so our best claim, as I always say, is that we have an equitable claim. And that’s based, really, on her intent and that of her husband, George Putnam, because there are contemporaneous records at the time that said, we want to give the plane back to Purdue. Can you imagine what the students of 1977 would think about a plane of this kind that was being used 40 years prior? And so that was in their mind. And certainly, had the flight been successful, it would have made its way back to Purdue based on that.  

Anyway, so that’s why I’m on the mission, but it’s obviously a professional privilege. It’s a personal privilege. It’ll make me very proud to be a part of it. Like Amelia said– I think of one of her great quotes– “When a great adventure is offered, you don’t refuse it.” So after I built this collaboration with Dr. Pettigrew and he asked me to join, I had to say yes.  

Absolutely. It’s fairly dangerous though, right? Walk us through some of these things that you all have to do to get to the island and be where the search is happening.  

Yes, this is a place where nobody goes. Essentially, it’s been uninhabited since 1963, and it was only briefly colonized, as I mentioned, for a time. Last year, we were going to leave from the Marshall Islands. This year, we’re going to leave from Tarawa, which is the capital of Kiribati.  

Kiribati consists of three island groups primarily, about 33 islands over the expanse of its territory. By the way, it’s one of the largest countries in the world in terms of overall territory, but one of the smallest in the world in terms of landmass. It takes six days to get there, so twice as long to get to Niku as it does to get to the moon. We will have to be equally self-sufficient.  

Obviously, the vessel that we will have will have provisions, and power, and fuel, and so forth. There is no anchorage off of Nikumaroro because its slopes off the reef are very deep into the deep ocean. So we’ll essentially be not moored, but parked offshore on the island. And we will go onto the island every day.  

We will make our own power when we’re on the island. So we have a tech team. Our great alum, Sirisha Bandla, is part of the tech team that’s going to make sure everything’s working. We have solar arrays that then feed into a solar power system that will generate the power that we need to operate the equipment in terms of the undersea, the maritime archeology, and so forth. So we’ll have to do all that ourselves.  

The reef is very high, as I mentioned earlier. And as a result, the British got tired of waiting for the tide to rise every two weeks or so to get people on and off the island. You never would be able to do this under current environmental regulations, both international and domestic, but the British just dynamited a channel through the reef, and it’s called the Blasted Channel. Essentially, it’s the front door to Nikumaroro. So we will be anchored– not anchored, but stay– we will be powering ourselves to stay off the Blasted Channel.  

And every day, we will go through there. We will get to the beach. And then the first day, there, we actually have to machete our way through the jungle to get to the lagoon. And half of us will do that while another half takes our transport boat around to the opening of the lagoon on the west side of the island. And then every day, we will all go through the Blasted Channel, through the so-called Gallagher Highway. Gallagher is named for the British officer who at one point ran the colony there. The Gallagher highway is what we have to recut through the jungle.  

And then we will go from the southern part of the lagoon, across to the Taraia Peninsula every day and back. And we’ll be there for five days. So six days there, five days doing that work back and forth to the Taraia Peninsula, and six days back. There’s a chance, by the way– I was looking at the football schedule. And our last day, local time, will be October 17. And noon on October 17 will be kickoff time against the Washington Huskies in Ross-Ade Stadium. So there’s a chance that we might have news to announce–  

Wow.  

–at Ross-Ade Stadium if we’re able to have a Starlink connection, but I might be getting ahead of ourselves.  

All right, you heard it here first. Get those tickets so you can be the first to learn the news. Wow. What about food, water? What kind of things are you guys packing?  

So that is all provided by the vessel charter company. And this time around, we’ve obtained the vessel from Kiribati National Shipping Line. So that’s actually been beneficial. It’s one of the serendipities of our having postponed the expedition again. Instead of leaving from the Marshall Islands, we’re actually leaving from the capital of the country that we’re dealing with now. And so we’re able to make this investment in procuring the vessel from them.  

Captain John Rounds is the CEO of that company. He’s been a great partner. We’ve made our preparations. He will have all the provisions that we need. We even have the menu of things that we’ll be eating. On the menu, by the way, are coconut crabs. I’ve been wondering if those are the coconut crabs that we’ll actually capture– we won’t, but the ship’s crew may capture– on the island. Nikumaroro is famous for the size of its coconut crabs, which I’m told can be the size of a large dog.  

Wow.  

And, by the way, they tend to be aggressive, not during the day. But that’s in part why we leave every night. We’ll leave the island and go back to the ship. I’m told they can be pretty aggressive at nighttime.  

This is fascinating. So you have two members of Purdue’s Cradle of Astronauts joining as well, Sirisha Bandla, who you mentioned, and then Marc Hagle. What does it mean to you to have two other Boilermakers on this trip with you?  

Well, it’s a great honor to be involved with both of them. I was so happy that we were able to recruit them to the effort. Marc was actually the first. I talked to him within days after meeting Rick Pettigrew. And we were down in Naples. And I knew from President Daniels that Marc was quite the adventurer. And so when I talked to him in Naples, I floated this idea by him, and he, of course, jumped on board right away.  

Now, Mark’s been extremely valuable to us given his business acumen and advice. So he actually accompanied Rick Pettigrew and me to Tarawa when we went in April. So he’s been a great technical advisor to the team, and then Sirisha, as I mentioned, it’s going to be great to have a Purdue engineer on the team.  

In addition to Mark, and Sirisha, and me, we have 13 others that will be on the expedition team. That’s not counting the vessel’s crew that will be supporting our efforts. But on the expedition team, we have Dr. Pettigrew, of course. We have two other veterans of Nikumaroro expeditions along with Rick, and that’s Dr. Ren LaRocca, a retired cancer surgeon who’s in Louisville. And he was on a prior trip with Rick to the island.  

We also have our medic, Aaron Arrants. Aaron is an Air Force veteran whose unit in the Air Force was actually the unit that got Marcus Luttrell out of Afghanistan. He wasn’t on that mission, but his unit was. So he’s very qualified in terms of providing the safety and medical care that we need and very practical things in terms of how we’re going to get along on the island.  

In addition, we have our two maritime archaeologists from a firm called Recon Offshore in Pensacola, Florida. We just had a great half-week visit with them down in Pensacola to do some team building and some planning. And they’ll be great. And then we have four filmmakers who are going along. We have a couple of other field assistants under the auspices of ALI. Rick’s daughter, Laura Kennedy, who’s been going on archaeological digs with him since she was two or three years old, I think. And she’ll be with Sirisha on the tech team.  

And then we have a post-doc at the University of Oregon, Philippa Jorissen, who’s an expert on South Pacific atolls from an archaeological perspective. So we really have a lot of disciplines covered, and we’re going to have a very defined fieldwork plan that we’ll have lots of time to practice on the six days it takes to get there. So pretty much every minute of the day is going to be accounted for in terms of what we’re doing.  

And in addition to those folks and important to the collaboration with Kiribati, we actually have two representatives of Kiribati on the expedition team, one of whom we actually met the first trip to Tarawa in June 2025, the curator of the national museum on Tarawa. And she is going to be a great representative. And then we have one yet to be named as of today’s date. We still are trying to figure out who the final representative from the government is going to be, although we think it will be a representative of something called the Linnix Ministry.  

And Linnix is a portmanteau standing for the Line Islands and the Phoenix Islands. The Line Islands are the easternmost group of islands that I mentioned, and the Phoenix Islands is that central island group where Niku is. Those islands together have an economic development area. And actually one of the cabinet ministers with whom we have a good relationship heads that ministry. And so we believe that the final representative will come from that organization.  

What’s the consensus of the group right now? Are people a little bit nervous? What are you all feeling?  

I think we are locked in in terms of our preparations. We have a series of working groups that meet weekly. And then every other week or so, we have an all-hands meeting. I’d say the esprit de corps is quite good right now. The positive attitude is good.  

I think one thing that’s all in the back of our mind, and this is just being realistic, is that we’re all likely to suffer some seasickness. And depending on the sea state, it could be quite rough. El Niño is happening in the Pacific, of course, so that’s one consideration that we’re going to have. But other than that, I think we’re all about business right now.  

Amelia’s story and disappearance is so captivating, not only to Boilermakers like us, but to the whole world. Why do you think that is?  

For generations, Amelia has been so much more to Purdue than just a pioneering aviator. When she came here in 1935, she had an immediate and enduring impact. President Elliott invited her here, and she jumped on the opportunity so that she could be a career counselor to women students. And I was saying in an earlier interview that I still come across people whose ancestors say having the chance to meet Amelia Earhart at Purdue changed their aunts, their grandmothers, their great grandmother’s life. And such a great impact.  

So she’s really been part of the Purdue family. And, as I said, I think we owe it to her legacy, which means so much to Purdue culture, to the Purdue spirit, to follow this evidence where it leads. When we announced that we were joining ALI on this endeavor on the anniversary of her disappearance, July 2, 2025, I learned from your colleagues at Purdue Brand Studio later that it was the single largest earned media day in Purdue history, bigger than the day that we were in the national championship game on the same day as the total solar eclipse.  

So it’s a pretty big deal. And that’s because people are still captivated by Amelia. They still are captivated by the circumstances of her disappearance. And I also think, though, that’s just because of the courageous person that she was. I’ve come to the conclusion that she had to be one of the bravest Americans who ever lived. She was always striving to break the next record, to break the next barrier, see what could be done. And, indeed, her whole mission on this attempt to fly around the world at the equator was designed to study the effects on human body, on eyesight, and so forth.  

But she was just amazing. And not only was she amazing, she inspired others to dare to do great things, and that included people at Purdue. Think about our Cradle of Astronauts, who, in many ways, stood on her shoulders in terms of what she was doing here, not only advising women students, but serving as a consultant to our aeronautical engineering program.  

There’s a great quote from a letter that I have framed in my office of her to President Roosevelt. I think it’s late 1936. And she’s talking about how her preparations are coming along. I was telling my colleague, Jack, earlier that it’s weird how these things echo through history because her talking about her preparations reminds me of what we’re currently doing in terms of our preparations.  

But she said to President Roosevelt, “The flight, by the way, has no commercial implications,” highlighting the research importance of it. She continued, “The operation of my flying laboratory is under the auspices of Purdue University. Like previous flights, I’m undertaking this one solely because I want to–” And here’s the thing. “–and because I feel that women now and then have to do things to show what women can do.” And that’s who Amelia was.  

And, by the way, this is a science project. We’re not guaranteeing that we’re going to confirm that the Taraia Object is the Electra. But even if we don’t, it will still have value because we will have ruled out the hypothesis, and we’ll add to the evidence that’s been gathered over the years. So we really view this as a Purdue thing to do, a persistent pursuit of, in this case, trying to find the answers that have eluded the world for a long time. So it’ll mean a great deal. And hope we can do right by everybody and make the Boilermaker nation proud in terms of our efforts, but maybe even bring home the real answer.  

Steve, the details of this search are incredible, but what happens if the search is successful? What will happen with the plane if the team finds it?  

Well, after we get over our shock of having solved this mystery, obviously, we’ll be very gratified and joyful. But we do have active plans– and, actually, under the direction of Dr. Pettigrew at Archaeological Legacy Institute– to return to Nikumaroro within the year to do a full-scale archaeological excavation. Now, we’d have to do that with the permission of Kiribati again. But, again, that’s already been proposed to Kiribati. So they know that would be our intent. And since they’re going to be along on the mission, they’ll be part of those conversations through their representatives on the way back to Tarawa, if, again, a successful identification is made.  

Then after that, we at Purdue have a dream of bringing it back here as an exhibit. And that would be consistent with Amelia’s wishes and those of her husband, George Putnam. That’s a long-term aspiration. And, again, that would have to be done with the blessing of Kiribati.  

Now, we’ve actually proposed this idea to them as part of our proposal, consistent with our interest in a long-term collaboration with them with their blessing. And, by the way, we’d be honored to be entrusted to be the long-term custodian of this artifact that was found in their territorial waters. But if we were able to do that, we would share the benefits– whatever those benefits would be– with Kiribati because, again, it would be in recognition of the fact that they allowed us to go there and that it was found there.  

That brings up, by the way, the technological issue of how we will actually extract it from the lagoon even after the excavation. And for that, we might need some help from the US military, but that’s a whole other set of conversations down the road. Let’s first go there and find it.  

Well, this has been incredible. I could talk to you for hours longer, but you’re busy. You’re preparing to machete through the jungle.  

Right. Got to sharpen my machete.  

Is there anything I missed that you want to touch on?  

Well, one thing that I would say, you asked about the Taraia Peninsula. And one interesting tidbit that we learned in the course of our conversations with the folks in Kiribati, sometimes– you don’t hear this a lot in Boilermaker country. But as a person from Indiana, you sometimes hear, what does the word Hoosier mean? We ask, what does Taraia mean in the Gilbertese language? And, lo and behold, depending on the interpretation that you use, it actually means– or it can be interpreted in certain phrases to mean– go look at it or, in one even more amazing translation, go find it.  

Wow.  

And so we say that’s exactly what we’re intending to do. We’re going to go look at it. Hopefully, we’re going to go find it.  

How can our listeners and viewers follow along, get any updates about this exciting time?  

Well, we will be on social media via your colleagues at Purdue Brand Studio. I’m sure they will have us up on their various channels, including Life at Purdue. And that will be both in the lead-up to our departure– by the way, I think we’re going to do another project update, which is coming up pretty quickly. And then even after we depart, I think we’ll be providing updates via Starlink and so forth while we’re on the trip. So, yeah, people can follow along, and I encourage them to do that.  

That’s right. Follow along at @LifeAtPurdue on your favorite social platform of choice.  

Thanks, Kate.  

Thank you for listening to Finding Amelia, a miniseries by This is Purdue, Purdue’s official university podcast. You can revisit your favorite episodes, share with your friends and family, and join the conversation on our social media channels at @LifeAtPurdue. And this Amelia storytelling doesn’t end here. Be on the lookout for updates on the search expedition by following us on social media and visiting amelia.prf.org.  

Finding Amelia is a miniseries by This is Purdue, Purdue’s official university podcast. It’s brought to you by Purdue Brand Studio. The podcast is hosted and produced by me, Kate Young. The creative team behind the show’s videography, design and writing, and research includes Thad Boone, Jon Garcia, Jason Doty, Cheryl Glotzbach, Ashvini Malshe, John Underwood, and Dalani Young. Social media marketing is led by Maria Welch, and our project manager is Rain Gu. You can check out purdue.edu/podcast to learn more and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

This is Allie Gabriel.

And this is Kate Zipay.

And you’re listening to This Is Purdue.

Welcome to This Is Purdue, the university’s official award-winning podcast. I’m Kate Young, your host and a proud Purdue alumna. This Is Purdue is all about sharing big ideas that spark broad interest and get people talking. We’re passionate about highlighting notable Boilermakers who are powering innovation and working together to solve today’s toughest challenges.

Tune in to each episode as we have engaging conversations with Purdue alumni, faculty, researchers, coaches, and more who are inspiring change through small steps every day across timely topics like sports, well-being, emerging tech, and life-changing research. Join us as we discover how these Boilermakers are taking their next giant leap.

We are really overconfident in how good we are at multitasking, how good we are at switching, how good we are at being on the meeting, but also trying to edit a document at the same time. You’re like, oh, of course I can be on the Zoom meeting, camera on, and still edit this really other important thing and look like I’m paying attention. It’s like, no, you don’t.

In this episode of This Is Purdue, we’re talking to Allie Gabriel and Kate Zipay. Allie is the director of the Center for Working Well within Purdue’s Mitch Daniels School of Business, and a nationally recognized expert on employee well-being. You may recognize her voice from a previous This Is Purdue episode, where she discussed workplace well-being and tips on avoiding burnout.

Kate is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources at the Daniels School of Business. Her expertise focuses on how people develop a healthy relationship with work, including how experiences outside of work shape well-being and performance.

Now you all are in for a treat with today’s episode. Allie and Kate are not only Boilermaker colleagues, but friends in real life as well. And you’ll be able to tell, trust me. Their collaboration and communication is effortless. These two are digging into the difficulty of prioritizing deep focus time while remaining productive in today’s digital day and age.

Between the constant distracting pings of texts and Teams notifications to the subtle trap of popcorn brain, have our attention spans been systematically taken over by technology? These two are sharing tangible takeaways to help us reclaim our cognitive stamina.

Whether you’re fighting attention residue from a flooded inbox or just looking to build a better deep work routine, this episode is your blueprint for retraining your brain for larger, deep-thinking tasks, outsmarting the temptation of your precious phone, and finding your focus again. Allie and Kate kick things off by tackling productivity and what it actually means. So let’s get to it. Here’s my conversation with Allie and Kate.

Allie and Kate, thank you so much for joining us on This Is Purdue. We are so excited to get into today’s topic. Allie, you’re a returning guest on This Is Purdue. Thank you so much for coming back. I’m glad. I guess I didn’t ruin it the last time.

No.

In fact, you were one of our most popular episodes of 2025. So you specialize in employee well-being, workplace well-being, and you are the Director for the Center for Working Well within Purdue’s Mitch Daniels School of Business. And, Kate, welcome.

Hi. Thank you!

So you are an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources within DSP. And we are going to get into how we can retrain our brains. It’s a world full of pings, and dings, and distractions. So how can we really focus on productivity and having a healthy work life?

Yeah, I think one of the first things we can think about is making sense of the difference between productivity and activity, feeling really busy. With all of the pings, and emails, and meanings that can fill our day, we can be really, really busy and still not actually very productive. And so we can think of that activity as quantity, like we’re doing a lot. But then productivity is that value. Like, are we actually making progress towards our goal and actually adding value to our organization or working towards our own goals?

Sure. And then it’s an American trend when we’re talking about we have to stay on top of to-do list. We have to be productive. So, Allie, do you think it’s been harder for working adults lately in these past few years, especially with all the doomscrolling, and TikTok, and Instagram, and YouTube?

Yeah, it’s really interesting. And I feel like we actually talked about this the last time I was here, of just like that constant connectivity that people have. And it’s all forms. So you’re constantly connected to a phone that’s giving you your email, but also your Teams channel, and your Slack, and whatever other method you’re using to communicate. And then right over here on the other side, you have YouTube, or TikTok, or Instagram. Like, my guilty thing is Instagram and LinkedIn. I’m on LinkedIn an unusual amount, just scrolling through things.

You guys are are rock, stars on LinkedIn.

Oh, thank you.

[? They’re ?] [? like ?] a puzzle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I feel like there is that– we have gotten really bad at sitting still and not constantly doing something. And these social media platforms, they were designed to be addicting. There are people actually working in these platforms and these entities to make you scroll more, to pull you back in.

So I think because of that, the doomscrolling and this constant connectivity to work is all feeding into the same problem, which is people are not taking time to rest, to recover, to sit still. And that can create even more pressure than if you are doomscrolling and you’d be like, oh, I just did that too long. Now I’ve really got to be busy and I’ve really got to take on more to make sure I’m catching up and I’m keeping on top of things.

And obviously, people who work from home or in an office, they can end a meeting and start scrolling, right? Are there any industries today that you feel are protected from this digital distraction?

No. We had coffee this morning to puzzle with this. And I did think really, really hard. I had a dentist appointment today. That’s a lot of time in a chair to just think there while [? they’re ?] grabbing something.

A dentist?

Yeah, my dentist. So I think there are some professions where you will get larger chunks of time where you naturally will be away. But then how quickly do you get back into that? There’s actually really interesting data coming up on even like doctors, healthcare providers, maybe they’re doing a procedure, but then they actually are side hustling on these online medical platforms where they’re giving advice or they’re doing social media.

So I think certain industries maybe make it easier to do it more constantly. But even the ones where you have a larger chunk of time. Like, obviously when we’re teaching here at Purdue, we are not in the middle of a lecture being like, you know what, guys, let me see what that video is on my Instagram feed. That won’t be on Kate’s Instagram feed.

But then immediately after, what do I do if I’m walking out of the classroom and I’m walking to the elevator? I’m definitely on my phone. I’m scrolling LinkedIn. I’m catching up. I’m seeing who texted. I think it’s less about what industry and maybe more about the structure of work, which is something I think we’re going to talk a lot about today.

Yeah, let’s get into focus versus productivity. How would you define the deep focus and cognitive stamina, Kate?

OK. So focus is really where are we guiding our attention. And we can certainly picture up times when we’re losing that ability to really focus. But then when we’re thinking about that stamina of how long we can focus, how long we can endure a mental challenge or a puzzle. And I find myself doing this too, right? I’m stuck on a problem, I’m writing for my research, and I can’t quite figure it out. And then suddenly I think oh, the answer must be in my Instagram scroll.

Right?

It’s got to be there.

No, it’s sourdough. It is. How to fit in 40 grams of protein before 10:00 AM. It is parenting hacks. What is not there is really sitting through that struggle and allowing myself to think and practice that struggle that I can stay in the work and continue persisting through.

I think the other puzzle piece there is that not everything requires that level of cognitive focus. And so starting to really think about what type of work we have that requires that and how do we build up that stamina, and then what parts of our jobs just do not need that level of focus or cognitive stamina to keep persisting.

My emails, I do not need to pore over them and grapple with them. A few typos, it’s going to be fine. We can keep moving in a productive way. And so starting to discern where to put your focus, if it is on the highest priority. And for the things that require deep focus or deep work, that you are building that skill and practice of sitting there and persisting through, instead of tending to those pings instead of sitting with the discomfort.

That makes sense. That’s great. Allie, according to a 2026 survey from the Pew Research Center, 41% of US adults say they’re constantly online, which we were just talking about. Have our attention spans just been systematically taken over by technology, in your opinion?

I think so. And there’s some really interesting data coming out of– Microsoft has a work trend index. And they are documenting through those data points how so many working adults are waking up to full inboxes, full Slack channels, full Teams messages. I don’t even look at my Teams. That’s just not a place for joy [CHUCKLES] because it’s just piling up.

And so when you think about waking up first thing in the morning and you pick up your phone, not only do you have social media notifications, but now you’re also waking up to the fact that your colleagues maybe were working throughout the night or they beat you in the morning, and they’re up earlier than you, and they’re already flooding your inbox.

And so it is creating this sense of everybody is working all the time. It starts to breed this sense of, therefore, I can never stop working. And that’s really the puzzle. That’s the bad place when you get to the point that you think, hey, everybody else around me must be working like this. Therefore, I must work like this. This is the only way to work like this. And I don’t want to deviate from that because then I’m going to look like I don’t care or I’m not as committed as the folks that are firing off these teams messages at all hours of the day.

Do you have any tangible tips on how we can retrain our brains? Maybe putting your phone in another room or just getting out of that temptation of reaching for it and scrolling?

Yeah. Kate has some really cool practices. I do think you can train your brain to do this. Technology, it mimics an addiction. It’s why we all find ourselves– none of us right now have our phones. And I bet when we walk out of here, maybe we won’t do it because we’ve been talking about it, but the odds are high. If we were, we’d probably all would flip our phones and immediately be on it.

And so having docking stations away from places where you’re supposed to unwind. I’ve actually seen on Instagram, which is maybe a bad place to have this conversation, but people having this movement of getting shelves or even cords that they can plug into their kitchen to leave their phones and mimic the phones from when we were growing up that were attached to the wall and trying to remind ourselves that this is just a phone. It’s just a device.

So I have a few practices that I implement my own life to model these things. So one is I use a device that locks down different apps at different times of day. I am one of those people that if I wake up in the night, will reach for my phone, and I cannot ignore that red circle that says I have an email and check it out. And so for me, if I do reach for my phone at night, then I can’t access those apps, I go back to sleep. That is great.

Another practice I have is that I do not do any work until I finish all of my coffee. And so I read a book.

I love that.

I sit and stare. I water my plants, whatever it is. And there’s lots of evidence that building in these rituals and practices make it easier for us to maintain it. So if I had this kind of ambiguous goal to not get into work until I’m feeling ready, that is harder. But when I have the metric of when my coffee is done, then I’m ready for my day.

And then the other thing is, I’m a hobbyist of all varieties. I’m not good at hardly any of them. But I carry around a bag of a lot of different types of analog hobbies, sketchbooks, a Sudoku puzzle, a Rubik’s cube. I’m a puzzle gal. But those things are tempting to me, too. And so then when I have downtime, if that is just as accessible to me as my phone, or even more accessible, then that desire for entertainment, or activity, or interest is fed by something that might be healthier for me.

The other piece, I was thinking about the boxes that you were talking about. I brought that into the classroom in my leadership class. And so part of being an effective leader is starting to understand how our own habits are affecting our own productivity and how we relate to people, but also helping others better manage these things.

So they have a box that locks their phone in, and they set an amount of time. And during the week that they check out this box, they have to use it in at least one social setting, one academic setting, and then this year, I added by themselves. And then they write a reflection and we talk about it in class each week.

And it’s been pretty profound for the students. They don’t like it uniformly, but they feel the discomfort and the growth. And so I have some really positive stories from it. A student kind of started her reflection, “this was the best week of my college experience.”

Oh, my gosh.

Right. But such an awareness that she had spent more time with her roommates, and socializing, and she got more of her work done and so she had more time to socialize. But then other students have talked about the time alone and putting it in the box there, that it was a bit disturbing to just be with their thoughts and be with themselves.

And one said they had not spent that much time by themselves since they were given a smartphone in middle school. And so having these small moments of awareness and practices changed the culture in my class. Hopefully planted a seed for when they are in organizations or there are so many of them are working remotely, that they are thinking about that box and how they can simulate it. Maybe they’re not locking it in a box, but they’re plugging it in another room and really thinking about the benefits that it had to them.

As soon as you said, when you’re by yourself, I think that’s my most guilty offense, is when I’m by myself is when I’m doing my most scrolling and being on my phone. And even when I go for walks, I’m listening to a podcast. I have something.

Yeah. And it’s interesting, though, I think when you build in some of these practices and habits, you realize like, nothing was that urgent. I locked my phone away for an hour or I left my phone in a different room to charge and I didn’t look at my email from 8:00 PM onward. And you come back to it and you’re like, oh, this was fine.

For most jobs, that is the reality. That nothing is truly that urgent that needs or requires that please respond ASAP kind of level of urgency. But I think because we’re so used to being busy and we’re so used to being productive, everything starts to hit that decibel, and we don’t have a lot of good mechanisms to turn it off.

For sure. When we talk about deep thinking and focus, like you were saying, Kate, how are these deep thinking tasks different from these more low stakes tasks? Sending an email, maybe cleaning up your calendar. Is there anything that you recommend at the beginning of your day, maybe you’re knocking out those low stakes tasks, or any science or research behind that?

There’s two ways to tackle this. One, Allie and I have been having a lot of fun using some kind of food analogies to make sense of our relationship with work. We have a lot of language about our relationships with food. And we can use those analogies to make sense of these in surprising ways.

So one is building a balanced work diet, if you will. And we can picture that there are tasks that are more nutritious, if you will. They maybe require a lot of energy and focus, but they are rich in what they give back. They are kind of core to your task. You really want to prioritize those in your diet. But we can’t just eat plates and plates of avocados all the time.

Like, this is an avocado. We can’t podcast all day. We would collapse and be like, that was not a good use of our day.

And so you’ve got your, like, iceberg lettuce, if you will. This is your emails. The basic tasks do not build a whole career of responding to emails, but certainly it has to be done. We can have plenty of that on our dish. And if there are other things in there that are low effort but high value, I mean, acai berries or something, I don’t know.

But then there’s also the a bit more indulgent category, kind of fills you up but doesn’t really move things forward, and Allie and I have dubbed those work Cheetos.

No disrespect to the Cheetos brand.

I love Cheetos! OK. But you know when you’re just filling yourself up on junk food and it’s not what you need. It is very tempting. You feel full. And the goal is not obsessive diet of no Cheetos. It’s knowing which parts of your work tasks are those parts of your work. Sometimes it’s like, for me, meetings before meetings and meetings after meetings, and there’s a little utility in there and a lot of waste or–

Like gossiping, politics, things where on the surface you’re like, no, this is productive because I’m learning, I’m learning who’s in the room. I’m trying to understand. But still, maybe there was some small piece of utility, but also, it’s consuming a lot of energy. It’s filling you up. And you’re still going to walk away from your workday being like, what? And we’ve all had that feeling.

What did I do today?

Yeah, what did I do today.

But I’m exhausted.

Yes.

And then on the other side, now I’ve popped in Allie’s office before and said, “hey, do you have some time for some Cheetos?” And it gives her some autonomy and a chance to discern whether today she does have space on her plate for something that isn’t as productive or right now, she really needs a nutrient-rich day and she can move forward like that.

So these tasks are different depending on your job. But starting to think about which tasks are doing what for you. And then if you’re thinking about the morning, to the extent that it’s in your control– I learned the hard way, when I teach, I am a bit brain fried in the afternoon. And so it is unrealistic for me to teach all morning and then block deep work time to solve a really critical research problem.

But then previously, I probably would have done that because I was worried that I needed to work on my research every day and that I needed to seem like I was making progress, instead of recognizing that it was not really productive hours. And so starting to scaffold or sequence your tasks in a way that is more productive.

For me, that means that actually teaching in the afternoon, I can teach a bit brain fried. It’s a different kind of movement and energy. The students bring great energy. And I could get research done in the morning. Or more realistically, I spend that afternoon on some other types of tasks and teeing up a really productive, focused day on that heavier cognitive work the next day.

Yeah. Allie, let’s dig into the early birds versus night owls. How do you know which one you are?

Yeah, I think I was like, I think I’m a night owl, but I don’t work late at night.

She’s a sleeper.

Yeah, I just go to bed. I will say, there is some science behind this, that some people are more oriented towards working really easily in the morning or feeling like they work their best in the evening. I will say there is a trickiness to labels. I think people can lean into them too far.

And so something that makes me nervous when we think about work from this lens of, oh, well, I’m an early bird, so that means I need to work from 7:00 AM till 3:00 PM. And then you have somebody who’s a night owl and they’re like, well, I am really great from 11:00 AM till 8:00 PM. And now you put those two folks on the same team. And they’re really leaning into this part of their identity. They’re like, no, I just cannot. Yeah, this is how I am. It’s fixed. It’s set.

And I worry about labels like this because we do need to find ways to collaborate, to not let our decisions of how we approach our work create burden for other people. And so instead of being like, well, I’m a morning person, I’m an evening person. What if we flipped it and just said, when do I feel like I’m at my best and how can I facilitate tasks that best align with that, right?

So maybe it’s less of, I’m only going to work now and I’m only going to work now, but more of, well, we have a common set of hours and I really know that that’s what I’m good at collaborative work. Because I think that’s what people are saying when they say that, is they’re like, well, I’m good at the deep work, I’m good at doing the writing during this particular time.

And so I caution folks, and this is a caution for any type of label we can put on things, whether it’s the night owl, early bird, whether it’s a BuzzFeed survey, or whatever it is that you’re taking to try to diagnose and make sense of it, is to remember that it’s not as much the label but more about how can you tune into what feels most adaptive and productive for you. And also, this is a good reminder to remind folks like should just go to sleep. A lot of things in our world, I think, could be solved by drinking water, probably eating protein, and just going to bed, and just taking care of those basic instincts.

And a lot of these statements, like I am an early bird or I am a night owl, for me, bells are kind of sounding on a really fixed mindset. And what is really going to help people navigate being well and being productive is a much stronger growth orientation.

And so when we claim that one identity, it has kind of an implicit, and that’s just how I am and I’m not going to change. And that’s not really how our brains work either. We have defaults. And then we also can override those things with practices, and habits, and flexibility. And so cautioning that if we use that as a cop out for some really adaptive behaviors, we might be missing the point.

And I think that labeling, it just doesn’t work the way most work is structured. You don’t get to be so autonomous in what you do that you don’t have to think about the consequences.

Nobody’s having a Teams meeting at 7:00 PM. That’s now how our days are structured.

Right. And so I think that’s the part that always makes me nervous. And we’ll see it in the classroom, too, with students, like, well, this is how I have to work. And it’s like, well, if that’s your approach, how are you going to be coachable, receptive to feedback, resilient when other people need you to work in different ways? And so I think parts of the conversation today and our thinking has been less of labeling people and more of how can we help you shift and flex the mindset and the approach you’re taking to work.

I love that. Kate, what’s the trade-off between well-being and productivity? Is it possible to center both of those in our lives?

So we see this trade-off is really adopted without really challenging it or problematizing it. And in the short term, it often is, right? I’m going to keep working and shorten my lunch. Or for me, my workouts are quick to go in favor of trying to wrap something up. And so we create these structures where we are treating them like trade-offs. That in order to perform better, I must sacrifice some other aspect of my well-being. And that mental model is really what reinforces that trade-off. It reinforces it in organizations. And we build a lot of cultural language around making those trade-offs and sometimes celebrating those trade-offs.

And so there’s a different way to think about it that would be more adaptive or adopting a mindset where you are thinking about how those are synergistic, and interdependent, and working together. There’s actually a lot of research that would support those things.

Burnout is not a great performance strategy. Yet that is the one that we often adopt because we assume that that trade-off is really the only option. And for me, this looks like putting myself in that mindset of understanding what that relationship between my well-being and my performance looks like, and am I making choices that allow both to sustain in a meaningful way and override that system that says, I must be performing well because I have a late lunch. And thinking that actually I need energy to persist, and I probably could perform better, faster, and with more clarity if I tend to those well-being aspects of my life and consider them systems that are working together.

What organizational policies or workplace practices make it easier or potentially harder to sustain productivity and well-being?

I empathize with our HR practitioner colleagues that are often kind of bounded in the offerings that they can give to employees. And these are great things, like more PTO, or flexible work arrangements, or mindfulness apps. But a lot of these are predicated on the idea that work is going to be challenging, and depleting, and wear you down. And then we are going to give you things outside to try to fix those things on the outside, either allow you to better cope with it or take a break from it. But the assumption is that it’s still going to be rough when it’s there.

And so Allie and I are asking a little bit different question or nudging organizations to ask a different question. It’s like, what can we do about the work itself, how people relate to the work, engage with the work and manage their work so that we don’t need to just focus on all of these reactive solutions, and we could actually use that PTO for fun, and enjoyment, and creativity and not just recovering from something that was really rough.

Yeah, because the tricky thing with policies and practices is it’s one thing to have them in place, but it’s another of how they’re used, how they’re reinforced, what the values are. A story or an experience I had that always will stand out to me is it was right before I was about to have Evelyn, our youngest, which I said, I’m having flashbacks sitting here because she was like five or six months old. Now she’s almost 18 months old.

But I remember talking to my colleague right before my leave and she was like, “how are you feeling?” And I was uncomfortable, not enjoying this anymore. And he said to me, “I just want you to know how important it is what you’re about to do.” And I thought he was talking about having a baby. I’m like, “yeah, I’m aware.” I got the– yeah, I got the– yeah, yeah.

And he’s like, “no, no,” like, “what you’re about to do with your leave. That you’re about to, as a senior faculty member here in the Daniels School, take the leave, take it fully, and mean it.” He’s like, “because you’re now signaling to other people that when they have a baby, if they are more junior, if they don’t have tenure, if they feel like they’re in a more precarious spot in the school, they’re going to look to that and say, ‘no, that is allowed, and it’s encouraged and supported. ‘ ” And you could put other well-being practices in that bucket.

I do think that leaders underestimate how much their language and what they reward explicitly or implicitly shapes how people approach their well-being. We have data that essentially, if you take time away from work, if we don’t fix work and we just say, well, you’ve just got to recover outside of it, if leaders send signals that good employees are the ones available 24/7, that they respond very quickly, it does not matter what your company’s PTO policy is.

What happens is that people who do recover now feel a lot of guilt. They feel a lot of shame. It takes something that should be restorative and actually hijacks it and says, no, I’m being deviant. I’m doing something now that is so antithetical to how this place works and now I actually need to do more. And what do they do? They burn themselves out. They report poorer work-life balance. They’re less engaged.

And so thinking not just about, hey, we have this great policy and practice, why is no one taking it or why isn’t it working. It could be lots of things, but I would suspect it is about the cultural norms, and the conversations, and how people use it, and talk about it, and then what cues they get back after they do so.

So PTO policies, good. A manager that takes PTO, great.

And talks about it and says like, oh, man, that was great.

Flexibility in your work day, nice. A manager that says, I’m using that flexibility to take my child to a baby music class in the morning and still is getting all their work done, even better. We need examples in normalizing and celebrating that people can work in that way and not have to either do it secretly or not do it at all.

Yeah, and I imagine if you saw your boss taking Friday, Mondays off and never taking a full week, you’re not going to take a full week.

Right.

Right. you’re going to be concerned about it. And particularly for folks who– because there is– and I am puzzling with this, like the privilege of getting to have more, quote-unquote, “balance,” which is the term that I despise. I think it sets really unrealistic expectations. And we should probably say that the goal of what we’re talking about here is not this perfect pendulum where your work and your non-work lives and your performance and your well-being are perfectly in balance with each other. But rather you are able to flex those differently and in sync with each other, knowing that some days work may need to be more prioritized. Other days, you may have an easier time with well-being.

–healthy and it feels like you are in control. And that you are living your life. And life is not just happening to you, [? where ?] [? your ?] life is happening to you.

Yeah, I actually used that phrase to Kate last week. We were talking. And I was reflecting on the spring. And it was really busy. I was teaching all my classes. One was new. We were planning a conference for the Center for Working Well. And I said, “wow, last semester, it felt like work was happening at me.” That I wasn’t having autonomy or really able to think about that. And that was startling. I think it startled both of us to say it out loud.

To that point, so Allie and I have several different buckets of work we’re doing together. And that led to a conversation that we stopped something for months. And because it’s not actually urgent, even though we could have convinced ourselves that it was, and that there was inertia, and we could not possibly not do it, but we said, well, why don’t we take back control? Let’s just not work on this piece for eight weeks.

How freeing was that?

It was great. We relaunched yesterday.

Yesterday. It was great. It synced up with vacations and really meaningful pauses. It allowed me to pivot to this new role that I have at Journal of Management, editing. It allowed Kate to lean into really meaningful research projects that she was getting out into the world.

And it was a conversation that needed to happen and maybe didn’t feel comfy all the time, because we care about it and we had to name it, saying, hey, this is not the moment and what will it look like when it comes Back. And now I think we both feel more energy because we knew when enough was enough and we were at the point of enough.

This is the perfect segue because we’re talking about high performers and burnout. And so you both presented a session at Uplift 2026, which is a conference hosted by BetterUp. But it was all about how high performers are the most susceptible to working the long hours, and being available, and not eating lunch. So why is this?

I’m pausing because I think we are high performers. I think we’ve allowed it.

We come to it in very different ways. One thing that stood out from that talk that we did together and conversations we’ve had since then, is that for high performers, all of these ideas– we talked about policies and structures– are really only part of the puzzle. They have what researchers call a doer identity. That this is kind of an identity issue. People see themselves as high performers. They see themselves as a people that are willing to say yes, to do more, to stay late, and that–

Your elementary report card probably said this.

These identities are deeply embedded from us far before we get to the workplace. And so we are asking people to do some deep identity work when we are asking them to rethink what it could mean to be a high performer. And that that might look more intentional. It might look more discerning. And you might need a new identity.

It’s hard to lose an identity. And so perhaps, it’s replacing that doer identity with an identity that you are known for somebody who is incredibly discerning with their choices. That are really healthy. I’ll go with that, that option, healthy and discerning. And so perhaps there are better things to be known for than just doing and doing and doing.

If we go back to the first part of our conversation, separating doing from creating value. And so maybe it’s the value creation identity. And that allows for high performance and rest, fun, well-being, interests outside of work. There’s a lot of space if we give room for productivity to be interpreted differently.

Are there any specific tips, hey, all the high performers are out there listening and watching, how can we set some boundaries, just one or two ways?

I think we can each speak from personal experience. I think we both approach this. I’ve gotten better at this, like thinking of how this got ingrained from a really young age. And I just became really identified with being the person who has a lot of capacity and who can take it all on. And I’ve had to get better over time of waving the flag, saying, actually, I miscalculated. [CHUCKLES] I didn’t calibrate this correctly.

And so what are some things that this looks like day-to-day for me now? It looks like an inbox that always has emails in it, which sounds really silly to say. But I would have such pressure and almost a compulsion to look at my inbox as something that had to be fully cleared every single day.

And we’ve already talked about this a little bit. Some of that meant I was spending time on things that truly weren’t urgent. Some of it was expecting myself to handle things that took a lot of cognitive load. Read this draft of a manuscript, make a decision on this paper, evaluate this student for this really critical milestone. And I’m thinking that staying up till 10:00, 11:00, midnight is the way to achieve that so I can go to bed and have 3 minutes where there’s not something in my inbox.

So I think for high performers, you might look at your inbox and say, oh, this is my to-do list for today. And instead, it’s really required taking a step back and thinking about my week, the arc of my whole week, in case you have a different variation of how she manages her week, and saying, OK, what do I think are going to be my high energy days, what might be some of my days where I need to bank on being a little less attentive or having less capacity.

And let me then not be bothered by the fact that there’s these seven-eight emails, knowing that I will get to them when I’m at my best and I feel at my best, and that there’s nothing that urgent in there. Now, certainly, things can come in and hijack your day. We need to respond to that sometimes. But I think viewing it less as a to-do list and more of this is the realm of possible things I could choose from is a much healthier approach.

And there are very, very few emergencies in academia. And just reminding, at least our own colleagues that, not that kind of doctor.

Yes, we’re not that kind of doctor. No one’s calling for us on the plane.

[LAUGHTER]

So I have a practice that was coming out of this research that we’ve been working on. And so on Sundays, I take a look at my calendar and I am trying to cancel at least two meetings. And when I say this often, like–

She’s done this to me, I want to be clear.

Like, how could we? How could we cancel two meetings? Here’s the thing, I’m not looking for Slack or just bandwidth. I’m not just looking for more space. I’m actually using that as a practice to add discernment where I hadn’t added discernment before.

So I think this is a universal issue. Somebody reaches out, wants to meet or have a conversation, it’s probably not the best fit for me and what I need to focus on. So instead of saying, no, thank you or have you met this person, that might be a better fit. I look at my calendar– and I’m kind of running on a three to four week busy cycle. So I look at my calendar, and you know what, four weeks from now, I’m wide open. And so I schedule them as if I’m going to have a totally different job four weeks from now and it’s not going to get filled with a bunch of other stuff.

And so I’m looking for those meetings that I need to do the more courageous thing to say that this isn’t going to be the most high priority thing for me and go ahead and actually cancel that. I’m also looking for opportunities that I need to rethink who needs to be in the room.

And so sometimes, it is our ego wrapped up in, they need my opinion, of course, or those colleagues or co-authors need me to make certain decisions. And so this is an exercise in remembering or reminding myself who do I need to trust to do this without me.

So maybe I’m not canceling the meeting, but I’m canceling me being at the meeting. I’m also looking for meetings that actually just need to be decisions and work done. And so sometimes if we have a little bit of decision delay, then we put meetings, like, oh, we’ll decide in two weeks. But really, maybe it’s my decision and I need to make the decision, sit down, and communicate what that decision is. And so recalibrating with more clarity.

Now it’s getting harder because I’m getting better at saying no or yes. But then the surprising thing for me is that I’ve had a lot of years where I’ve thought about well-being and performance without a really discerning practice. And sometimes that meant that I had too rigid of boundaries and that I actually did have time, resource, and energy to do more.

And so my youngest is in grade school now, and I am finding myself with more parenting is less cognitively demanding, but it’s also less time demanding. And so I’m also thinking about ways I can amplify my performance so it’s not always a less. Sometimes it’s a, where I can do more, where I can enjoy staying a little bit later.

My husband and I have agreed this year to try fully owning mornings every other day. And so this morning, I was out of the house on a walking meeting before 8:00 AM, which before I would have thought that was maybe too early and that I was kind of keeping it in work hours. But that felt really good.

Yeah.

I love that. That’s tangible tips right there. OK, so let’s get into some of these productivity-centric buzzwords we have. We have popcorn brain. We have attention residue. Allie, walk us through these.

OK. We are really overconfident in how good we are at multitasking, how good we are at switching, how good we are at being on the meeting, but also trying to edit a document at the same time. You’re like, “oh, of course I can be on the Zoom meeting, camera on, and still edit this really other important thing and look like I’m paying attention. It’s like, no, you don’t. We all know.

What do you think, Allie? And you’re like–

Yeah, yeah. You’re like, oh, I think that’s a great idea, and now you’re on a committee, right, because [CHUCKLES] you agreed. And we just overestimate how good we’re going to be at this. And that’s where the attention residue comes in. Because if we are rifling through things, you’re like– so go back to my inbox. I’m trying to rifle through this and I’m trying to do multiple things at once, the last thing that I worked on sticks around for a little while.

Think about the last difficult conversation you had with somebody, whether it’s a family member, a friend, a coworker, you didn’t get out of that conversation and then say, OK, that’s done. No, your brain is still spending some time spinning. You’re like, is that, was that, did I sound like that? Is that what they meant? Did they mean to be mean? Was I mean?

Same thing with our work tasks. I’m notorious, if I am multitasking, I’ll send an email and then 30 seconds later I’ll be like, [GASPS] who did I address that to? Oh, my gosh, was that the right person? And then I’m going back and I’m panicking. And I have a very traumatic story of one time where it was not the right person. And I was like, oh, boy!

And so we need to turn off, and I have to wonder, how much is this correlated with how much we are constantly connected and our brains are getting used to having multiple apps, multiple tabs open. But we have to understand that we have limited capacity on a day-to-day basis. Our capacity to multitask is low. You’re not as good at it as you think you are. People know. [CHUCKLES] They can tell. And that these things are going to stick with you.

And so wouldn’t it just feel better to try and discern and turn that noise off and say, you know what, this is not the time. This is the time to sit in the Zoom that I did agree to and I decided that it is important for me to be in this meeting and pay it the attention that it deserves, right? As opposed to thinking that you can use that space to check off other things off of your to-do list. You’re just going to burn yourself out and be a bad colleague. Yeah.

I love that. That you’re not as good as you think you might be. So pivoting to your role at Purdue Center for Working Well, how would you say that Purdue is at the forefront of this employee well-being and productivity field?

Yeah. One of my favorite things about the Center for Working Well, besides getting to do this work with Kate. You’ve also had Kasie Roberson on this pod. Like, the whole team, the whole gang has been here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think one of the things that I like the most about the Center for Working Well and why Purdue is at the forefront, is we are creating spaces to have conversations like this, to invite students and faculty, but also community members, organizational partners of Purdue to really challenge these assumptions.

I think it’s a really beautiful thing that folks want to sit down and really puzzle with how they have been working. The most frequent client, so to speak, that the center works with on these issues is Purdue. It is. And that is the group we hear from the most saying, hey, we really need somebody to come in and talk to one of our development meetings or can you help lead a workshop? We need language around this, right?

The other thing that I love and that I get to see from my vantage point is that we have so many folks across campus doing this important work and approaching it from a very different lens. So I think we have an embarrassment of riches in the Daniels School of folks like Kate and others, myself, who are studying these issues, teaching them, generating the next generation of scholars through our doctoral students, through a program we just ran the last two days called The Emerging Scholars Program, where we are identifying pre-doctoral students to start talking about these challenging issues.

But we also have folks then from public health, and sociology, and hospitality who are saying, no, this is not just a business school conversation. This is a human conversation. And if you are in a discipline where you have to interface with people, which is pretty much everybody, even the vet school– they have folks affiliated with our center, too– that this is a conversation that’s worth having. That this is not a badge of honor to just decide that as a profession or a discipline that it’s OK to burn out. But rather there’s a better way of doing things. And I’m just really grateful that Purdue believes in that and is creating platforms and opportunities to talk about it.

Kate, you and Allie were selected in the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2026. Congrats. That’s exciting.

Thank you!

And this recognizes the world’s top management strategists. So how does this achievement inspire you and Allie’s future work?

Oh, gosh, it has been an awesome opportunity and a reminder that our ideas are worth sharing. And that with that maybe as a responsibility, I think it went from, oh, my gosh, us to yes, and. This feels important to make time to get out of our academic spaces and have these conversations. That there is an appetite or even a hunger for evidence-based conversations around performance and well-being.

And it gave us a little bit of a boost to say, we’re going to throw our names in the hat for different rooms to have these conversations, to represent Purdue, to have conversations with you on this, and just recognizing that there’s a lot of spaces we can have these conversations and a lot of ways that we can make impact. And that part of the value of being a professor and a researcher is really embracing that responsibility and pursuing those opportunities.

And deciding to do it together.

Oh, gosh.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s way more fun. It can be lonely if you’re puzzling with these things. And Kate and I were doing research separately for a really long time and naturally came to this sort of of work together. Came into it from very different approaches. I think it’s made it way more fun because it forces us to challenge each other’s assumptions. It’s helped us, I think, hold each other to account. Saying like, hey, you’re not being discerning right now or hey, you are working at really bizarre hours again. Is that intentional? And I think it’s been nice to have somebody who gets it, who wants to do it together.

Yeah, it’s just way more fun. Not totally surprising as we’ve been having this conversation, but we’re not just kind of colleagues and research partners, but we are actually best friends. We integrate our work and non-work lives in all of the ways. And for me, it’s just such a reminder of showing up authentically, challenging how work is supposed to feel and maybe what being a professor is supposed to feel like. And that, sometimes, it’s not that serious. That we can be really good at our jobs, and have a lot of fun, and do it with a friend.

And that for Allie and I recognizing there’s room for everyone. That the first time when we took a stage together in this capacity, there was about maybe 5 minutes in, and we looked at each other, and we could just communicate with our eyes, that there’s room for both of us here. And I hope that for so many more people, that there is so much space to collaborate, and have more fun, and be really generative in that way.

Well, and you two are so comfortable together. I imagine it would be much more comfortable presenting to hundreds of people with each other.

–having a chance to think right now while Allie’s talking.

Right. It was funny, though. So the first time we got to speak together as a duo was at Uplift, which was such a fun opportunity. It came from work that we got funded by the Center for Purpose and Performance at BetterUp, the seed funding, honestly, for some of these early ideas. And it was just so nice having a trust fall moment of, OK, there’s somebody on– like, if I fumble, she also knows me well enough to understand what I was probably trying to say.

And I remember after that experience, yes, there was physical space, there was psychological space, all the spaces available. And we love a good pre-mortem and postmortem on something. Although, we did it a little too soon to this talk, where 30 minutes before, Kate’s like, let’s talk about all the ways this could fail. Like, how could we fail? How could we flop?

–downstairs and I said, I forgot to do this before, but if this goes poorly, why, which is an important conversation in so many organizations. It is standard practice in many spaces when something fails to have the conversation of why did it fail and maybe less common to have the conversation of forecasting into the future, allowing yourselves to imagine the failure, and really naming what it might be. So we did that, but with only 20 minutes…

Yeah. So I wouldn’t advise that. I’d give yourself a little bit of an emotional buffer. But then after, we were able to sit with it and say, OK, now let’s talk about it again, and what went well, and now what are we afraid of, what are we nervous about, and what didn’t we like. And the only thing I could say is like, oh, the thing I didn’t like is I don’t know if we’ll get to do this again together. That was so special. So I hope that’s true.

And so extra thank you for inviting us.

Yes, yes, yes. Because I was like, oh, god, like–

[LAUGHTER]

We are here together.

The dynamic duo is back on This Is Purdue. Let’s get into AI. Super hot topic. We’re bringing it up in pretty much every episode. So trend reports indicate that searches for AI productivity have exploded since 2023, naturally. So when you look at the future of productivity, how is AI at the top of mind for both students and professionals, Allie?

It’s so complicated. And I think it’s giving a false sense of productivity. You can feel really smart, really fast through AI. You can say, hey, I need to do this report, or maybe you were me five years ago and you’re thinking, I need to really clear my inbox, so I’m going to use AI to be so productive, and get all these answers, and get all these drafts.

But there’s no psychological ownership of that work. It’s giving a false sense of productivity. If you were called in the room then and someone said, hey, tell me more about your thinking about this, how did you come to this decision, it would feel really bad to say, oh, I didn’t. Claude did. My chatbot did in 30 seconds and I gave it a quick proofread and said, sure, that sounds productive. That sounds accurate.

And so I think we’re always interested in finding the next quick fix. Right now, it’s AI. Previously, it was something else. There will be something after AI, too. So I guess stay tuned. Five years from now, there will be something new that has come up.

And my word of caution to folks would be, really think about how you’re using AI. And I know that’s been something that has been talked about on this podcast before by Kasie and others, and really think about, why am I doing this? Am I having AI help me be productive by pressure testing ideas. Like Kate and I love a good eye pressure test of, hey, we’re thinking about framing something this way. Take the approach of this type of audience. How would they respond to that? Getting an answer. But then sitting back with it. Again, not just being like, oh, that’s the solution.

Sit and think. The conversation here is not that different than when we were thinking about how to manage productivity and well-being, in that, for us, it really comes back to this idea of discernment. That we get out of autopilot and we really make intentional, discerning decisions. And so coming up with whatever your questions are before you use and how you use AI for whatever task you have.

So something like, is this good for my kind of value creation, is this good for me, and is this good for the people around me, that would get me to a lot of clear answers. Because sometimes, it’s pushing that deep work to somebody else, not good for others. And sometimes, it’s just less fun. A lot of things are not that serious. And if we try to augment, and leverage, and optimize, and whatever other “izing” feels good in the moment, then we are taking away some of the pleasures without a real gain. So let your personality be in your emails. Be human.

Have a typo.

I was just thinking, as you were talking, and I’m thinking about the whole arc of this conversation, I was like, oh, I think AI is the new work Cheetos. Because I think people are just hammering them, being like, oh, I could use AI to be so efficient, and so productive, and blah, blah, blah. And you walk away being like, I was busy today, but I have no ownership over anything. I don’t understand what I contributed. Now I’m going to have to keep up with that act tomorrow. What is that going to feel like?

If you were able to make really effective decisions as a team without a 10-page guide that an AI agent created, then when you show up with that 10-page guide, it’s kind of false productivity, probably. If it didn’t actually give a meaningful change in how you created value, then you might puzzle with that. And maybe it did. But really, asking a lot of questions around it, and making sure that you’re staying in control, and that you are the primary agent involved.

Yeah, don’t let AI make all your big decisions for you. That’s probably a bad day.

Well, we’ve covered so much today. And it’s clear that the modern worker is stretched in so many ways. You all feel it. We feel it on our end. What’s your best advice for us all to keep in mind when we’re trying to do our best?

Yeah, we have felt like we fall back to this question. We came up with this 2022, I think. When we first started, when Kate called me, two big phone calls with Kate. One was asking me if I wanted to move to a cornfield with her, which was the impetus for how I got here. But the second was around this idea of rethinking our connections to work. And she described how she was really puzzling with this idea of when have I done enough?

Like, what if we all asked ourselves more recurringly, when have I done enough? Have I done enough? And if that’s all that somebody listens to this and remembers, I think that’s such a powerful act, a powerful reminder that your enough is going to look different day-to-day. That your enough is not going to be the same as the person next to you, who maybe has different demands and different capacity, a different work-non-work life structure. And stop letting work really happen at us and instead say, when have I done enough, when can I step away, when is it the right time to step away.

And so many people are like, never. Or when my to-do list is done or when these external forces force it on me, I never feel like I’ve done enough. And so then for those people, it’s like, ask again tomorrow and keep asking yourself this until you start to build some clarity.

Because we’re not only asking you to then try to stop when you’ve done enough. Because past enough is the type of depletion and burnout that is really hard to recover from. And so we’re kind of working to train ourselves to be protective of our long-term performance. And so keep asking that question until you start crafting an answer that feels more aware, and more aligned, and more attuned to what’s really going on in your work life.

I love that. Well, I feel like I was chatting with my good friend Allie last year. And now I have two friends. So that was so amazing. And you guys have such tangible tips for people to take away. So anything else that I missed? Any last advice for our listeners?

I know. I feel like it’s like drink water, go to bed. But really think about, like, when have you done enough? Put less pressure on yourself to do it all and to get everything in perfect equilibrium because that’s not unattainable, and why would we want to exist in a world where we’re just striving for something that feels unattainable and makes us feel kind of guilty all the time?

Yeah, I just want it to feel joy-filled, and healthy, and productive, and that those things can all move together, and how wonderful when they do.

And practice discernment. I like that one.

Yes, be discerning.

I love it. Well, thank you both so much. It was a pleasure.

It’s been awesome.

Thank you!

We can’t thank Allie and Kate enough for joining us. What a fun and extremely educational episode. You can check out additional video clips with both of them on our podcast YouTube page by heading over to youtube.com/@thispurdue. Watch as this dynamic duo rate common productivity hacks and give a few pointers on what to do with a short 20-minute window in between meetings. And stay tuned, because This Is Purdue is launching something special on Monday, September 28. Be sure to subscribe to This Is Purdue on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This Is Purdue is brought to you by Purdue Brand Studio. The podcast is hosted and produced by me, Kate Young. The creative team behind the shows videography, design, and writing and research includes Thad Boone, Jon Garcia, Cheryl Glotzbach, Ashvini Malshe, John Underwood, and Dalani Young.

Social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. And our project manager is Ryan Gu. Thanks for listening to This Is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at Purdue.edu/podcast. And head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe today so you never miss an episode. You can also check out all of our podcast video content on our YouTube page at youtube.com/@thispurdue. And as always, boiler up!

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I’m Stephanie Pemberton, and you’re listening to This is Purdue.  

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Welcome to This is Purdue, the university’s official award-winning podcast. I’m Kate Young, your host and a proud Purdue alumna. This is Purdue is all about sharing big ideas that spark broad interest and get people talking. We’re passionate about highlighting notable Boilermakers who are powering innovation and working together to solve today’s toughest challenges.  

Tune in to each episode as we have engaging conversations with Purdue alumni, faculty, researchers, coaches, and more who are inspiring change through small steps every day across timely topics like sports, well-being, emerging tech, and life-changing research. Join us as we discover how these Boilermakers are taking their next giant leap.  

You think about sports performance, I mean, they’ve got their own analytics staff and team that is really looking at player performance, the amount of technology that exists on the field that a lot of fans don’t even see or maybe realize exists, the chips that players wear, and the type of insights that we’re able to gain and gather for each individual player, both from a performance standpoint, from a coaching and game strategy standpoint. It’s evolved so much. And so I think those career opportunities have grown alongside of it.  

In this episode of This is Purdue, we’re talking to Stephanie Pemberton, senior vice president of marketing for the Indianapolis Colts. Stephanie is also a proud Purdue alumna. She received her bachelor’s in communication in 2005 from the Brian Lamb School of Communication. She’s worked in multiple marketing and community relations roles within the Colts organization for over 20 years now.  

So as a marketing leader in the NFL, Stephanie has key insights into the future of sports careers and how students can break into the industry through its many diverse pathways. This was a special podcast interview as our team visited Stephanie inside the studio at the Indiana Farm Bureau Football Center, the headquarters of the Indianapolis Colts. So if you want to watch this conversation or check out additional clips from inside this broadcast studio, head over to our podcast YouTube channel, youtube.com/@thisispurdue.  

This is also an exciting episode because Stephanie is discussing a powerful new partnership between Purdue and the Colts. See, Purdue has a long-term priority to build the Indianapolis campus into a hub for diverse sports careers. And this partnership both expands opportunities for Purdue students and allows the Colts to leverage Purdue’s talent pipeline. Stay tuned for this fall because there are plenty of innovative and immersive events and projects in the works with the Indianapolis Colts. So let’s get to it. Here’s my conversation with Stephanie.  

Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us on This is Purdue, Purdue’s official university podcast. We have a little bit of a field trip here. We’re visiting you all at the Colts complex in Indy. But welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on.  

Yes, thank you so much for having me. We’re excited to have you all here in our home and appreciate you going a little remote today with the show.  

So you are the vice president of marketing for the Indianapolis Colts. You’re also a Purdue alumna. And we are going to dig into some key insights into the future of sports careers.  

There’s so many different pathways that students can take nowadays. We’re going to get into AI, how that plays into sports. And we’re just excited to dive into these topics, especially because Purdue and the Colts have a new partnership.  

Yes, I’m so excited. It’s really two worlds colliding for me, and I couldn’t be happier to be here and to be able to dive in with you today.  

So to kick it off, the NFL is really one of the most powerful organizations in business today. In 2025 alone, most sources have the NFL claiming at least 75% of the top 100 most-watched broadcasts last year. So with that level of visibility and potential, how has the Colts organization evolved during your time here to meet the moment?  

Yes, it’s a great question. It’s a big question. I’m going to date myself a little bit. I’ve been at the Colts now for over 20 years. And I think the good news is we have evolved and changed.  

I think for any business, whether that’s in the education sector or the sports sector, you want to be evolving, you want to be growing, and we have. And so, again, there will probably be some audible like, oh, when people listen to this and think back. But, I mean, when I started with the Colts, we didn’t have a social media department.  

I think I had just gotten my first Facebook account. The world just looked a lot different. And we didn’t have an analytics department. We didn’t have a data science department or even position, and that’s changed.  

We didn’t have our own in-house production team and videographers. It was really much more of a skeleton kind of crew. And so that has all evolved and changed, and I think for the good and for the better, the organization looks a lot different than it did.  

But at the same time– and I would say this is similar to Purdue– it doesn’t mean that we’ve changed who we are at the core. And I think that’s one of the things that’s kept me here so long. I know, obviously, it’s my home state, but I think even being able to stay with the Colts organization for so long, we are still rooted in a lot of the same values and beliefs that we had 20-plus years ago. And obviously, a lot of that is connected back to the consistency we’ve had in ownership with the Irsay family being the stewards of the horseshoe for so many years.  

I think a lot of how we do business and what our business looks like has changed. At the core, I think there’s a lot of continuity, which I think has made the brand even more powerful in today’s modern world, to have that rich history and some of those constants, even while you’re changing and evolving.  

The other thing that I’ll note– we don’t see ourselves just as a sports team or just a football team. That is an important part of our core product, but we really see ourselves as an entertainment brand, as a media company, and so much more than just a football team. And again, I think that’s just a testament to how sports, as a whole, has grown.  

Our athletes aren’t just athletes. They’re celebrities. They’re fashion icons. They’re their own social media creators and content creators. The landscape of sports holistically has really evolved quite a bit, and I think the Colts have evolved with that.  

Absolutely. Would you say that sports careers beyond the field, like research, data analytics we talked about, are more important than ever due to factors like AI and that shift to direct-to-consumer business model?  

Yes. I mean, it’s definitely expanded. I think the evolution of digital, social– the world is a lot more connected. And I think that’s unlocked a lot of new skill sets and different skill sets than maybe you traditionally saw in sports. Just the sheer number of internship opportunities we have and more unique and technical skill sets that we need has definitely evolved and grown.  

Now, at the end of the day, we are an experience-driven brand, and so we still have a core group of staff that are focused on that fan experience, and that will always be at the heart of who we are is we are an experience-driven brand. And so one of our core priorities every year and a lot of what even those more technical skill sets are still focused on is driving the fan experience, whether that’s digitally, live in person on game day. And so I think we always try to remind everyone on the team, no matter what your role or responsibility is, at the end of the day, the fan is at the center of what we do.  

And the good news is that with today’s world and the way that we’ve been able to evolve, how we can reach and engage fans has changed. And so you no longer have to be in Indiana or Indianapolis to stay connected to the Colts year-round in a very easy way. That’s been a really exciting part of how things have shifted. But yes, there’s definitely a broader array of skill sets that we’re looking for now as our organization has grown.  

If you were to look into the future, what sports careers do you think will be most in demand in 5 to 10 years that might surprise people?  

Yeah, that’s a good question. It’s hard to predict the future. I left my crystal ball at home. But I think, as you mentioned, just with our continued innovation and with continued focus on data analytics, AI, continuing to power the fan experience and connect with our fans in new and differing ways.  

I think content is still going to be incredibly important. Again, I think we produce all of our own content in-house. We have a full-service content production creative team that really acts as an in-house agency, and I think that model is only going to continue to grow, and those capabilities are going to only continue to evolve.  

With the world getting smaller, if you will, and shrinking and just access globally becoming easier, you’re going to continue to see growth on the international side. We hired our first director of international two years ago. And if you had asked me 20 years ago when I started if I thought that would be a role, I probably wouldn’t have.  

And I think it’s really exciting to think about football not just as an American sport, but a global sport. And that’s going to continue to be a priority, I know, for the NFL. And I think you’re seeing that with a lot of the other leagues as well. While we have the US market captured, we feel like there’s a huge opportunity to continue, and there’s a huge appetite in demand for American football around the world.  

Let’s say we have students listening, watching today. What advice would you give them? What kind of skill sets do they need to land a dream job in sports right now?  

One of my biggest challenges getting into sports was just there was way more people that wanted to work in sports than there were opportunities that existed. Now, as we’ve talked about, there’s a much broader array of experiences. We have a lot larger staff than we used to.  

There’s also a lot of new sports and emerging leagues that have come on. Sports, as a whole, has grown so much that there are a lot more opportunities, which I think is the good news. But it is still competitive. And I think that depending on where you’re looking to plug into sports, whether that is a more technical side of things or whether it is more on the experience, brand, game day, event side, there are some basic things that we certainly look for.  

I think one– it sounds old-fashioned, but just that work ethic and that problem-solving, critical thinking ability. Sports moves very fast, and it’s an industry that– if you think about it, our on hours, if you will, are a lot of time– the broader population, it’s their downtime, right? So you’re talking nights. You’re talking weekends.  

Holidays.  

Yes, because we’re an entertainment company. And so just knowing what you’re signing up for and having a mindset that understands what that looks like and that is willing to adapt and be able to operate in that fast-paced, high-energy environment, I think, is really important. So I think there are some of those core fundamental needs. And then I think, again, depending on the role that you’re looking for, then you layer in some of the more technical skills or things like that.  

I think one of the biggest things is build your resume while you’re at Purdue. Attending class is critical. Classwork is critical. But there’s also a lot of free time and in-between time. And so how can you plug into campus? How can you plug into student organizations? How can you seek internship opportunities?  

I waited until my senior year to be able to land an internship in the NFL, and that wasn’t for a lack of trying before, but I think the reality is most of our interns are at that senior level and have built their resume over the past three to four years. And I think that’s typically what you see at the league level, is a lot of interns that are at that junior, senior level that have built the experience. And so you have to be willing to not be too picky, I think, with the opportunities, keep an open mind, but know that you’re not going to probably get exactly where you want to be right away, that there’s going to be some stepping stones.  

I think back to my career at Purdue, and I think one of the best things I did was just making sure that I wasn’t close-minded. I knew I wanted to work in sports ultimately, but I kept an open mind to other opportunities that I felt were adjacent to the ultimate career that I wanted. And so I worked at the Purdue Writing Lab. I worked for the Purdue student newspaper.  

I actually took an internship up in South Bend that I had a connection through one of my professors and found out about that was with a civic organization. I eventually landed an internship with the Purdue athletic department. And so I didn’t just wait for my summers to come to get those internships, but I really tried to plug in on campus year-round.  

And then I think too just building relationships with your professors. I had some professors that had incredible connections and relationships outside of the education sector. It was through one of those relationships that I was able to get connected to the Indiana Fever, where I got my first pro sports internship that ultimately helped me land with the Colts.  

And so I think keeping that open mind, but also knowing that if you look around your class, there’s a lot of students that probably also want to pursue similar degrees. And so thinking about how can you outwork them and put in that extra effort and get that competitive edge because sports, especially when you’re first starting out, I mean, it’s going to be a lot of hours. It’s going to be a lot of hard work, again, depending on where you’re going to plug in. But you’ve got to be prepared. But I think ultimately, if you love it, it’ll be worth it.  

That’s the theme of the podcast. We’ve interviewed people from Disney. Get your foot in the door. You can always work your way up. And I think obviously in the NFL, that would be a huge key there.  

Yes. And I think that’s a really good point. I mean, one of the things I emphasize with students and interns coming in is it’s great to have long-term vision. It’s great to say, this is the job I want one day, or this is the role I want to see myself in.  

I think that can also be crippling sometimes and allow your focus to be on the wrong thing. And I think don’t lose sight of what’s right in front of you and the opportunity that’s right in front of you. And there may be days when you’re in an internship, and you’re doing a task that feels like a step back almost. You’re close to finishing your college degree. You’re going to be a college graduate. And you may go, wait, why am I doing this?  

I think at the end of the day, you’ve got to give that same amount of effort, whether it’s a task that you feel like doesn’t align with your skill set and what you can do, but also giving the effort to those small things. And I think that’s one of the life lessons I’ve learned is that if you can do the small things well, then slowly, you will be given responsibility to do bigger and bigger things. But you have to build that strong foundation along the way, and you have to show that regardless of how big or small the task is in your mind, that you’re willing to put in the work and do a really good job regardless.  

We talked about Colts games are an experience. Even the training camps are an experience. How are things like AI and extended reality changing fan experience, player training, community engagement within the Colts?  

Yes. Well, I think it’s safe to say AI is here to stay, and it is really becoming a part of everything that we do. We want to integrate it in a way that is purposeful, meaningful, that helps move our business forward, that helps bolster our fan experience. And so I think there are ways that it is being integrated into some of our existing tools and applications.  

I mean, you think about how AI is integrated into ticketing platforms and our fan experience– our technology that we use on the big screens to drive a lot of our fan elements and things. There’s AI woven into all of those. And then also just thinking about how can AI help all of our staff be more efficient, be more effective in their day-to-day tasks so that at the end of the day, we can spend our time where it matters most and that AI can come alongside us and help expedite some of those tasks that are maybe time sucks but aren’t accelerating the business.  

And so I think we’re really excited about the opportunities. Our focus is embracing the technology and then equipping our team members to know how to use it best to accelerate their jobs and then ultimately move our organization forward.  

You’ve been here for over 20 years. Are there any examples of how this emerging tech has changed your day-to-day every day?  

Well, I mean, I can tell you, like I said, AI is integrated into every tool that we have. Again, I’m going to date myself and probably bring a few chuckles to your viewers and listeners. But when I first started, I didn’t have email on my phone. And you look back, and you think, how did we even survive one business day without that kind of connectivity?  

Now you look at where we are, where those day-to-day tasks and that connectivity are greater than they’ve ever been. As we’re putting together our business plans, working with our analytics team on analyzing numbers and fan feedback, we’re using AI to help us, again, work through some of those things that used to have to be manually done to help accelerate turnaround time and help that feedback loop be shorter than it’s ever been.  

We’re able to analyze and evaluate parts of our business in real time in a way that, again, we just weren’t able to do years ago. And I think that’s only going to continue to improve. And then if you think about all of the content and things that we produce and just the timeline from the moment that we shoot something to when it goes live is just– that window has consolidated incredibly since I started. I think it’s really exciting the pace that we’re able to move and connect with our fans and interact with our fans really in real time. There’s minimal, if any, delays, which I think is really exciting.  

I love that. That’s great. So we talked about our partnership with Purdue and the Colts. What excites you the most about partnering with Purdue, specifically with our Indianapolis location?  

Oh, where do I start? I mean, really, it is my worlds colliding. I’ve always been a proud Purdue alum. And I think having the partnership in place now really allows, selfishly, me to highlight that pride in an even greater way and bring both brands together in an even more powerful brand.  

And I think the Indianapolis Colts are such a long-standing brand obviously here in Indy. Purdue has this amazing legacy brand as well. And so, to me, it really feels like the perfect partnership, where you’ve got these two organizations that are committed to a lot of the same things coming together to really make it even more powerful and impactful.  

I’ve always felt a sense of responsibility to the next generation. I would not be where I am today without professors, mentors, people coming alongside of me and helping me, whether that’s giving me advice, helping me make a new connection, or grow my network. And so I’ve always felt this responsibility to give back to students who are trying to follow in that next generation of sports professionals.  

And I think Purdue is the one– they’re obviously building and growing that next generation. And so I think I’m excited for the possibilities of just pouring back into those students that are looking to grow their sports careers and however I can help them do that. I’m excited for Purdue to have a greater presence here in Indianapolis. I think it’s a really exciting time to think about what that can look like for the future.  

And there’s so much happening in downtown Indianapolis. And I think Purdue putting a bigger stake in the ground in this city, I think, is going to be really powerful. When you look back in 10 or 15 years and think about what you all are doing in the city of Indianapolis to invest and pour into talent pipeline development and just building that brand in Indy, I think it’s really powerful, especially as you think about sports, because Indy is a sports town. We definitely punch above our weight class when it comes to how integrated sports is in our economy. And so I think it’s exciting to think about how Purdue can be a part of that in a bigger way moving forward.  

And part of our goal with the Indianapolis location is to have this hub for diverse sports careers. How do you see this partnership expanding those opportunities for Purdue students?  

I think just having a presence here is going to be huge. Like I just mentioned, there’s so much happening in the sports space here in Indianapolis. And being able to be in the middle of all of it– I mean, it’s one thing to be connected, just being in the same state, but I think when you actually have a presence in the heart of where all of that is happening, I think that is going to help accelerate.  

And then to be able to come alongside brands like the Colts, who have been in the city for decades and have been able to build this incredible sports town, it’s exciting to think about how we can work together to train and help that next generation of sports professionals grow their careers right here. Someone once asked me, what’s one of the most important decisions you made in your career to really help you get where you are today? And I said, I think it was the decision to stay, and stay in Indianapolis.  

When you’re in sports, you do have to be willing to move around where opportunities because, as we talked about, opportunities can sometimes be few and far between. But I think, for me, making the commitment to stay here in Indy and to continue to invest in what we’re building here, not just from the Colts perspective, but just from a sports ecosystem, has been one of the best decisions that I could have made.  

And I know sometimes students can feel the pressure of, I got to go to a bigger market to get where I want to go. And I think really thinking about what Indy is building here. And we’ve got a professional volleyball team. We’ve got the Indiana Fever just have skyrocketed the Pacers, obviously the Colts.  

And so when you think about just the sports ecosystem that’s being built and that has grown exponentially regardless of our market size, I think, is really exciting. And I’m hopeful that students will really think about those opportunities and not necessarily set their eyes on the bigger markets, but think about how they can grow their careers right here. And I think the power that Purdue and Colts combined can do to continue to foster that mindset could be really powerful.  

I love that because you’re from Indiana. You went to school in Indiana. You know the culture. You’ve stuck around that. That makes a lot of sense. That’s perfect. How do you think Purdue students could integrate more into the Indy community, speaking of that, and engage with this hometown team through this partnership?  

Absolutely. Well, I think just awareness is a good starting point. I remember going to my guidance counselor when I was really starting to look at internships outside of Purdue. And the Colts never came up. There wasn’t a ton of awareness around the opportunities that existed, how to potentially connect, how to potentially apply.  

So I think just having that connectivity and that awareness is a good starting point. We have so many incredible internship opportunities, game day staff opportunities where we can work around students’ busy schedules. And those types of opportunities, even if they existed, I wasn’t aware of them, back as a Purdue student. And so I’m hopeful that through this partnership, students can be made even more aware of all the opportunities and that we can help get them plugged in to where those opportunities are and help them point them in that direction of all the different opportunities that exist, whether it’s a part-time game day staff member as a starting point all the way up to one of our full-time, season-long interns, where you’re in the office every day, you’re integrated into our business operations, and you’re really getting that firsthand experience.  

And then I think just continuing to build awareness in our local market. If Purdue wants to build their brand here in Indy, I can think of no brand greater to help them do that than the Colts. We have one of the largest sports brands in the country. We’re one of 32, and we’re very proud of that.  

Sometimes we tend to be more humble, but I think it’s OK to boast about yourself every once in a while and just say, there is great power in what the horseshoe brings to the table. And if you include the Baltimore years, our brand has been around for almost 75 years, which, for an NFL team, is a long time. And it’s pretty powerful to think about, again, those two brands coming together. I think it starts with just awareness, and then you build from there.  

A lot of people think about the more glamorous roles behind the camera. They’re on the field. They’re doing the event side of it, welcoming people to Lucas Oil. What are different sports careers, sports engineering, multidisciplinary technology, AI? Why is it important to talk about those different careers within sports too for future students and people at Purdue who are interested in this partnership with the Colts?  

Absolutely. I think it’s good to talk about the breadth and the scope because we realize that everyone has different aspirations. Everyone has different skill sets, motivators. What a dream job looks like to one person may be something that is really scary to another person.  

Being on a camera may be great for one student, but the other student would prefer to be someone behind the scenes, and that’s great. And I think the beautiful thing about sports is we’ve got opportunities. Regardless of what drives you, there are opportunities that I think can fit those unique skill sets, personalities, et cetera across the board.  

And I know a lot of our conversations have been focused on the business side, but alongside the business side growing, I think the football side has grown incredibly over the past 20 years. You think about sports performance. I mean, they’ve got their own analytics staff and team that is really looking at player performance, the amount of technology that exists on the field that a lot of fans don’t even see or maybe realize exists, the chips that players wear, and the type of insights that we’re able to gain and gather for each individual player, both from a performance standpoint, from a coaching and game strategy standpoint. It’s evolved so much.  

And so I think those career opportunities have grown alongside of it. Just like our business side has become a lot more driven by data, insights, analytics, the same is to be said on the football side. And so I think that’s the other piece.  

And then if you think about that, that’s also grown the sports ecosystem outside of teams. So all the vendors and companies that we work with to bring that technology in and to service those needs. Again, maybe not what people first think of when they think of sports careers, but very much in the sports ecosystem and very much still under that sports umbrella.  

And so I talked about keeping an open mind, but I think that’s the other thing that I would say students should be very much aware of is a lot of times, when you say work in sports, you immediately think of the big media properties, and you think of teams. But there are so many other ways, whether that’s through technology. I mean, the sports technology ecosystem here in Indianapolis is exploding.  

I know there’s dedicated efforts now to really recruit and invest in sports technology. And it all goes back to that core strategy of the city of using sports as an economic driver. And so it really has expanded the amount of opportunities that exist for students because of that.  

Going back to your time at Purdue, you said you worked in the athletics department. Were you always drawn to sports from a young age? How did you become interested and passionate in sports?  

I have four sisters, no brothers. Despite being from a family of all girls, we became sports fans at a pretty young age, and I’ll never forget. So my oldest sister wanted to be a veterinarian since she was 10 years old. And so Purdue was immediately on her radar as she advanced into middle school and high school and started thinking about vet school.  

And she set her eyes on Purdue at a pretty early age. And so then that led her to start following Purdue sports. I remember in high school being able to go to some basketball games, and it was electric. Even though I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do yet, and I hadn’t necessarily decided on Purdue, I think just seeing the excitement around college athletics. And it really started to give me a taste for what it might look like to be in that sports environment and then got into watching Colts games and got to attend a couple Colts games.  

I’m from a very small town in Southern Indiana. We’re talking like one stop sign, not even a stop light. I was a country girl at heart. And when I had an opportunity to go to the big city and go to a Colts game a couple times, it was a big deal.  

And those experiences made a lasting impression on me and really, I think, started planting the seed of when I started looking at careers and thinking about what I wanted to do, sports popped into my head. I was thinking about communications and PR. I told my mom. I said, what about sports? And I think it caught her off guard at first. And I had several professors that tried to dissuade me and push me towards law school or other things, but once I started actually working in the Purdue athletic department, I think that experience really solidified how much I loved it and how much I wanted to pursue it.  

My senior year at Purdue, I mean, I joke. You talk about sacrifices and working hard. I never did breakfast club at Purdue. I was always working the football games. I was always working the basketball games. But I loved it.  

And, for me, it never felt like a sacrifice. It just felt like something that was fun and that I wanted to be a part of. And I think those experiences at Purdue and being able to be a part of the athletic department just really solidified that that’s what I wanted to continue to pursue.  

I majored in communications through the School of Liberal Arts, and then I got a minor from the business school. And so with that degree, I knew I could do a variety of different things, but I decided I wanted to give it a go of sports. And when I first started out, I think my parents thought, oh, she’s just got to get this out of her system. And now here I am, 20 years later, still in it, but it’s been a lot of fun.  

Well, not many students could say that they could experience a football or basketball game the way that you did from behind the scenes, right?  

Yes. It’s one thing to experience it as a fan. And I think all of us that work in sports, I mean, we are fans at heart. But you have to channel that fan energy a little differently when you’re working on the business side.  

And so I think it’s always great when you can work for a sports brand that you grew up loving. I still have a letter from the Colts from when I was probably 11 or 12, acknowledging me as an official member of the Colts fan club. And I think it’s a good reminder that even when you work in it, it often starts with those fan moments. But then the lens that you look through just changes a little bit as you start to see it as a business and understanding that how you act as a fan may have to look a little different once you’re on the business side. But again, I think it’s always important to care about the brand that you’re working for, and it only makes it more powerful.  

That’s a perfect segue. Right when you graduated from Purdue, you came to the Colts, started working here. You’ve been here for over 20 years. What made you stay loyal to the organization? What made you stay here?  

I think a few different things. I think one goes back to what I was saying earlier– just the Irsay family. The alignment of my core values with the organization’s core values has always been there. And then just continued opportunities for growth and being blessed to have the trust of ownership and our leadership to continue to grow my career here, to take on new things, really give me a chance to show what I can do.  

And I mentioned international earlier. That’s one of the newer things that I’d been able to be a part of. And again, there’s nothing on my resume that would tell you I’m equipped to do international business. But again, just having the trust from ownership and leadership to say, we want you to help lead us in this next chapter of growth for us. I feel very blessed to have that trust, and I don’t take it for granted.  

It’s interesting– our COO, Pete Ward, he actually started as an intern with a team in Baltimore and was one of the employees that came when the team moved here from Baltimore to Indianapolis. And he’s been with the organization for 40-plus years and just an incredible person. And I think it’s just a testament to the trust and loyalty that the Irsay family has. And again, feel very blessed to be the recipient of that trust and loyalty for so many years.  

What’s the most exciting thing about working in sports marketing?  

That’s a great question. One of my favorite parts. Yes, it’s exciting to be a part of a football team and the excitement of game day and wins and losses. And I’ve been able to be a part of a couple trips to the Super Bowl, one that we lost, one that we won.  

And those are, I mean, always exhilarating and exciting. And ultimately, that’s what you work so hard for, is you want to be at the top of the mountain and win those championships. But I think in order to stay in it so long, you have to enjoy the day-to-day and the grind of it, if you will, too.  

And honestly, I still get so excited to be able to see the impact that we’re able to and the memories and the moments that we’re able to create. I can’t control the wins and losses. And we always talk about that within our team. While we don’t control the wins and losses, we do help craft and create the memories and the moments that people will remember that they’ll talk about at the dinner table. That’s a huge responsibility when you think about it.  

And it’s a challenge, but it can also be very rewarding when you see a young person, a child, walking into Lucas Oil Stadium for the first time, and their eyes just light up. And the reality is we were all there one moment. And we can all remember that first big sports moment that we had, walking into our favorite team stadium or an event that they were doing and just the joy and the excitement and the awe of it.  

And I think at the end of the day, that still excites me and gets me excited about what the Colts are and can be in a community like Indianapolis. It’s those moments, a lot of times, that stick with me the longest. I think when I started my career, I was working in our community impact team. So a lot of the off-the-field nonprofit community moments and some of the most wonderful memories that I have are some of the make-a-wish visits we did.  

And I’ll never forget some of the young people that came in and just the way that we were able to surround them and really make their entire year and give them memories and moments again that will last a lifetime. And to be a part of that in such a meaningful way, I think, is really special and something that we can never lose sight of. As a sports team, as an entertainment brand, we always have to remember that that is at the core of what we do, and that emotional connection is something that is really, really special and very different from a lot of other consumer brands. It is a business at the end of the day, but I think we are in the business of making memories and creating special moments, and that will always be one of my favorite parts of the job.  

Sure. And I imagine in each summer, there’s a buzz. Going into the next season, it’s a fresh start.  

Yes, and we are in the thick of that right now with camp opening and the season kicking off. I think August, September is always one of our busiest times because everyone’s ramping up, but it’s also one of the most exciting times. And I think there’s so much anticipation and excitement leading into that first regular season home game, and that always excites and energizes our entire staff every year.  

I bet. So as we look towards the future of the sports industry as a whole, what are some of the ways that the Colts organization is staying at the forefront of all of this industry change?  

One of our core values is curiosity, and I think that’s something that we talk a lot about across the organization is we don’t want to be trendy just for the sake of being trendy, but we want to continue to evolve and innovate in a way that moves our business forward, that improves our fan experience, that moves us forward, but also is true to the core of who we are and grows our brand in the right way. And so every year, we have a pretty extensive business planning process where we look at everything we did the previous year, and then we start to ideate and explore and think about what can we do better and how can we solve for some of the challenges that we have, but also push ourselves to move forward in an even bigger way.  

And so I think allowing that time for open exploration, discovery, curiosity is really important and something that we continue to talk about with all of our team members and why it’s a part of our core value system, is we want our folks and our staff to be curious and to think differently and to think and innovate in a way that allows them to have some creativity and to try some things. It’s not always going to work the first time, and that’s OK.  

But I think doing it in a way that’s very collaborative and leverages that power of the collective group is also really important. I would say that’s been one of our most important processes that we’ve implemented over the last decade is just that dedicated business planning, exploration time because we know there’s going to come a point in the season where we have to move to execution mode, and we have to execute to the best of our ability, as flawlessly as possible. And so carving out that time to make sure that we’re giving our team members time to just take a step back, think big picture, think long term, think creatively, and then start to whittle in and figure out which ideas we want to actually implement for the year.  

How do you think this Purdue-Colts partnership will help advance these efforts? Any sneak peek things that you can give our viewers and listeners coming up?  

Oh, that’s a good question. I mean, I’m excited to just see what we can accomplish together and how we can build on the success of both of our brands. And the talent that you all can bring to the table, potentially, as we think about some of these emerging platforms, technologies, and the skills that will be needed to drive those, I think, is really exciting.  

Thinking about how we can work together to bridge the education to real life transition and just share and collaborate and us understand how all of these changes and evolutions within our industry are going to impact the student experience, but then also how Purdue can continue to equip students to be the best sports professionals when they are ready for that next step. And I think there’s going to be a lot of great insights and sharing that we can do. This is just the beginning, which is really exciting.  

Absolutely. Well, it’s been a total pleasure. Is there anything I missed, anything else you want to tell our listeners and viewers today?  

I don’t think so. I feel like we’ve covered a lot of good ground.  

We have.  

So these are great questions. And again, I’m just excited to be a part of this partnership and continue to support it in any way I can and, again, help your students better understand and connect with all that’s happening around sports here in Indianapolis.  

Well, thank you so much, Stephanie. It was great.  

Thank you.  

We can’t thank Stephanie enough for joining us on This is Purdue. And special thanks to the Colts for hosting us inside their studio as well. For more information on this new Purdue-Colts partnership, be sure to check out the links in our episode show notes. And if you’d like to watch some extra bonus videos, head over to our podcast YouTube page, youtube.com/@thisispurdue, and click that Subscribe button while you’re over there.  

This is Purdue is brought to you by Purdue Brand Studio. The podcast is hosted and produced by me, Kate Young. The creative team behind the show’s videography, design, and writing and research includes Thad Boone, John Garcia, Cheryl Glotzbach, Ashwini Mulshi, John Underwood, and Delaney Young. Social media marketing is led by Maria Welch, and our project manager is Reign Gu.  

Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcast. And head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe today so you never miss an episode. You can also check out all of our podcast video content on our YouTube page at youtube.com/@thisispurdue. And as always, boiler up.  

This is Lauren Link, and you’re listening to This Is Purdue.

Welcome to This Is Purdue, the university’s official award winning podcast. I’m Kate Young, your host and a proud Purdue alumna. This Is Purdue is all about sharing big ideas that spark broad interest and get people talking. We’re passionate about highlighting notable Boilermakers who are powering innovation and working together to solve today’s toughest challenges.

Tune in to each episode as we have engaging conversations with Purdue alumni, faculty, researchers, coaches, and more, who are inspiring change through small steps every day across timely topics like sports, well-being, emerging tech, and life changing research. Join us as we discover how these Boilermakers are taking their next giant leap.

I saw someone once pose the question like, well, why are all these dietitians, doctors, scientists trying to be influencers? And the reason is these influencers are trying to be doctors, dietitians, scientists. So I do feel like it’s important to combat the misinformation online.

In this episode of This Is Purdue, we’re talking to Lauren Link. Lauren is the assistant AD of sports nutrition for Purdue Athletics and a proud Boilermaker alumna. Lauren and her team of dietitians manage the nutrition, menu planning, and food service for 18 varsity teams here at Purdue, including basketball, football, volleyball, and soccer.

Now, if you have any type of social media account or read any newspapers or magazines, you’ve probably come across some type of recipe that claims to be high protein. And honestly, cottage cheese is everywhere now, including in recipes it had no business being in five or 10 years ago. Pasta sauces, scrambled eggs, dips, and even brownies.

The protein craze is here and Lauren is going to break it all down for us. How much protein does an average adult actually need? And what about the latest social media nutrition trend fiber maxing? We’ll dig into all of this and more in today’s episode. Plus, we’ll discuss easy and affordable ways that you can prioritize nutrition day-to-day, and why nutrition is vital for enhancing both physical and mental health.

Lauren is also a registered dietician and former collegiate athlete, herself a Big Ten Championship winning athlete at that. So she’s the perfect person to dive into the realities and myths behind the recent health trends on your TikTok and Instagram feeds. So let’s get to it. Here’s my conversation with Lauren.

Lauren, thank you so much for joining us on This Is Purdue, the official university podcast.

Thanks for having me.

We’re so excited to dive into today’s topic. It’s all over our social media feeds. We’re going to talk about nutrition. You are the assistant AD of sports nutrition for Purdue Athletics.

You’re also a registered dietician. You’re also a former collegiate athlete yourself. You played soccer at Purdue. So there’s no one better to get into everything that’s dominating our social media feeds lately.

No, I’m excited to talk about it.

So let’s kick things off. There’s so many things, all the emphasis on protein. There’s now fiber maxing. As a nutrition expert, what do you make of the rise of all of these nutrition trends on social media?

I think it’s nothing new that there’s a new trend every other day. I think it will probably be that way for the foreseeable future. But I think really when people ask, why are these new trends emerging? The answer really boils down to money.

It doesn’t sell product to say nutrition is a little bit boring, you should really just eat a balanced diet and hydrate and all these boring things. Really boils down to what can we sell? And I encourage people to think through that lens a lot when you see somebody pushing, whether it’s a product, a book, whatever it might be. Think through the lens of like, are they trying to sell me something? And if so, that changes the narrative a little bit.

Do you think there’s increased interest in the accessibility of nutrition and health content through social media? Are you seeing that Gen Z students are really interested in that, or has it always been that way?

I think it’s fair to say that probably this generation is more interested in nutrition, and maybe just health in general than certainly my generation was in college. I wish I would have been more interested in nutrition in hindsight, but I think definitely they are more exposed to things at an earlier age. We know they’re exposed to just everything, content wise all the time. Yes. I think it’s fair to say they’re more interested in nutrition and health than previous generations, and they’re exposed to a lot of different things, whether they’re good, bad, or otherwise.

As a registered dietician and actual nutrition expert, how does it make you feel when people are coming out of the woodwork on social media and claiming to be experts?

And unfortunate part is that’s where a lot of people get their nutrition information is not from an expert, but from an influencer online. Susan, next to them at the office, their cousin Eddie at the family party. Who knows?

But I saw someone once pose the question, well, why are all these dietitians, doctors, scientists trying to be influencers? And the reason is these influencers are trying to be doctors, dietitians, scientists. So I do feel like it’s important to combat the misinformation online.

But the hardest part, from my perspective, is that a lot of those people get followers and get attention because they use fear mongering tactics, they use big headlines and cherry pick data. And that’s a challenge for practitioners because the reality is that, like I said, it’s boring, some of the best information or the best advice. So yeah, it’s a problem and I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon unfortunately.

You talked about people selling you stuff and influencers pushing things. Do we actually need the protein powders that they’re selling, or can we get our nutrition from real food, eggs, chicken, et cetera?

I mean, definitely. Do we need it? No, overwhelmingly. Probably, no.

I do think it’s worth pointing out that there are some helpful uses for things that are fortified with protein. Maybe it’s convenience, self-stability, something that you can put in your backpack, or you can pack in the car for a ride. There are certainly good uses of some things that are protein fortified, especially in my world where I work with college students who are busy and they’re running around and they’re elite level athletes who need more protein.

So there are uses. I mean, the protein is out of control from a product standpoint. Everything’s got protein added. And the reality for the layperson, for most average adults is that if you eat dairy, if you eat meat, you’re probably doing just fine.

I more often try to tell people that I’m less worried about the overall amount that you’re getting and more concerned that you maybe spread it out throughout the day. A lot of people back load it into dinner. So most people, again, if you’re eating dairy, if you’re eating meat, you’re probably doing OK. And that would be another use case where if you’re vegan or if you are averse to eating dairy, that might be a good use of a protein fortified product. But overall, it’s definitely out of control.

How many grams of protein do adults actually need to be eating on a daily basis?

The recommendation is somewhere around 1 to 1.5 grams per kilogram. An easy way to think about it would be if you took your weight in pounds, that would be the absolute most you would need in my opinion. So 150 pounds person would need no more than 150 grams of protein a day. That would be like quite high really. That might be appropriate for an athlete or someone maybe who’s sick or recovering from something.

But the lay adult who’s casually working out or not working out, if you took your weight in pounds and divided that by 2, that’s probably a totally fair estimate. Yeah, that 1 to 1.5 grams per kilogram is a pretty good range for most adults.

Good to know. So the other thing that’s in the news a lot is GLP-1s. And recent data from Gallup News shows that 11% of adult Americans are using GLP-1 medications for weight loss, a steep rise from 3% reported in 2024.

And obviously, these medications help people that truly need them. But there’s also that risk of losing muscle mass due to the vast amount of weight that you’re losing. So how do you think that growing popularity of these GLP-1s is driving some of these nutrition and health trends?

I mean, I think it’s definitely driving some of them. The protein rise is probably a big one. And in fact, in our world, again, where I’m using a lot of whey protein products, it’s actually driving the price up. It’s driving the availability down because so many people are trying to get more protein in their diet in a way that’s not filling them up.

I mean, it’s definitely driving some of the trends. And I could probably get on a whole tangent about that, but I think I would just concisely say I agree with the standpoint. It can be a really helpful tool for a lot of people. But I also would not want people to misuse that tool or take it too far, and definitely be cautious of the muscle loss.

Depending on your age, it can be really hard to get muscle mass back. And so someone who’s older, I would be pretty concerned about them losing too much muscle and the ability to get it back. So it’s a balance.

Another thing that is popping up on a lot of people’s social media feeds, a lot of people are using them or you’re seeing them a lot more are supplements. How do you feel about those? What’s your opinion on using those?

I have so many opinions, but to keep it short and sweet, I think what people don’t realize is that if it has a supplement facts label, and that would be as opposed to a nutrition facts label, that’s going to be a food. A drug facts label is going to be a medication. Both of those are overseen by the FDA and regulated by the FDA.

If it has a supplement facts label, so you turn your product around, it says supplement facts. It’ll say right there on the label, this has not been reviewed by the FDA, but most people don’t necessarily notice or think about that disclaimer. And it is a totally, wildly unregulated industry that’s worth probably a trillion, maybe trillions of dollars.

And there’s been a study done pretty recently. It’s probably my favorite recent study about this where they went in, they took like 60-ish supplements off the shelves. So these are in big brand stores, took them off the shelves, tested them to say, does what’s on the label match what’s in the product? 90% did not. So 90% were inaccurately labeled.

So then the question was posed, OK, how much is actually in the product? 40% of that 90% had zero detectable amount of the ingredient listed. So that would be like you went to the store to buy a magnesium product, and there was zero detectable magnesium in it.

The other 60% of the 90% had anywhere from 0.02% of the listed amount, all the way up to 334%. And both of those are concerning for other reasons or for differing reasons. So it is just a total Wild West of an industry. So I really urge people to use caution.

When it comes to supplements, we look for third party testing. You will not find me recommending and definitely not providing a supplement that has not been third party tested. So that’s my quick nutshell on it. I think people just have no idea, and they see them constantly on their social media feeds in the stores. And the reality is, if it says supplement facts, you just have to use a lot of caution.

And best case scenario, it’s a waste of your money. Worst case, it’s detrimental to your health potentially.

Exactly, yes.

So, similar to the protein craze, we now have the fiber craze as well. What amount of fiber do adults actually need to stay physically and mentally healthy?

Women need about 25 grams. Men, I think it’s about 32 to 35, somewhere in that ballpark. And for what it’s worth, I don’t know that I support fiber maxing. That’s probably a bit extreme, and people might regret that from GI symptom perspective.

But I like it better than the protein, if I’m being honest, because most people do not get enough fiber in their diet. Americans resoundingly don’t get enough fiber in their diet, and that’s because where does fiber come from? Fruits and vegetables, whole grains, beans, legumes, things that we just probably don’t eat enough of.

So I don’t hate that we’re focusing on fiber. In fact, we’re not getting enough in our diet, and it has a lot of benefits. I mean, it’s really good for gut health. It’s really good for cardiac health, actually. There’s a lot of really good things about fiber.

So absolutely, we need it. Let’s get some. We don’t need to go crazy though like anything.

What are some other things that we should focus on when it comes to the adult diet? We talked about protein, we talked about fiber, obviously, fruits and vegetables. What else?

Honestly, I’ve alluded to it, but like most professionals in our space will tell you, the answers are kind of boring. I really promote eating regularly. So eating every three to four hours for most people is very helpful. I talk about this with our athletes all the time.

A balanced plate is 100% what I support for any person, for an athlete, for a lay adult who’s only mildly active. Of course, now what that plate exactly entails is going to change, but my goal would be that people look down at their plate and they have some kind of carbohydrate, they have some kind of protein, and they have a fruit or a vegetable. That’s a really good start for most people.

And then within that framework, if you can get some variety, we just talked about the fiber piece, absolutely. If we can get more whole foods, that’s a great goal. Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, all of those kinds of things.

But I think for most people, if they’re starting at ground zero and they know very little, if you look down at your plate and you have a carbohydrate, a protein, a fruit, or a veggie, that’s a pretty good start. And then, of course, the other boring advice, make sure you’re drinking plenty of water, be active, get plenty of sleep. Again, it doesn’t sell books. So that’s probably my baseline advice.

Sure. And I feel like in the old days, it was carbs are scary.

Totally.

Why are carbs important?

So they are our main energy source. And, of course, again, everything I do day-to-day is with athletes, so I’m really pressing that we need carbohydrate. But it’s true for the average person too.

Our brain prefers to solely operate on glucose. Glucose is a carbohydrate at its most simple form. So it’s fair to say, though, do Americans probably eat more carbs than they need? Yeah, probably. A lot of people do.

So what I would say is back to that plate and the balanced plate aspect, it’s a piece of our plate. It’s not our whole plate, and that’s often I think, where Americans maybe go a little bit awry is that maybe we have a whole plate of pasta. And then I also have some breadsticks on the side.

The carbohydrate itself is not the problem. Pasta, bread, all these things that have gotten this really bad, scary reputation, those are not the problem. If we eat in excess, that could be a problem. If we cover the carbohydrate in a really cheesy, creamy, high calorie sauce or high fat sauce, then it starts to tip the scales, maybe towards unnecessary intake or whatever. But that, I think is probably the biggest thing that people misunderstand is that it has really been villainized and we need carbohydrate, but we need it in moderation, just like anything else.

Sure. Or if you’re eating that every night, that’s when it becomes the problem. So we talked about GLP-1s and the protein craze driving the prices of things. And I’ve seen on fast food menus there’s special GLP-1 menus now at Smoothie King or wherever. What is some type of advice for people who want to eat well and also want something affordable? There’s that bad rap that eating healthy can be expensive.

Yeah, and it’s fair because it can be depending on how you approach it. I think anytime you’re eating out, you’re going to see higher prices. It’s more or less attainable depending on your situation.

But I think the best case is that we’re doing more cooking at home, we’re grocery shopping, we’re prepping our meals at home. There’s a lot of really healthy foods that are totally attainable. Protein wise, eggs are a great, cheap protein.

Buying like frozen protein, your chicken or whatever, buying it frozen, buying on sale and freezing. Beans, legumes, we mentioned. Those are super cheap options.

On the carbohydrate side, I mean, most carbs are actually quite affordable, pasta, rice, those sorts of things. And then fruits and veggies really can add up in a cart. Thinking about buying in-season, buying on sale, trying not to overdo it.

I think a lot of people maybe get in a mode where they’re like, I’m going to eat healthy and I’m going to go get my healthy groceries. And then they’re like loading up their cart and then half of it goes bad in the fridge. So being realistic, I usually encourage people pick a couple things you’re going to make that week. Pick a handful, 2, 3, 4, maybe fruits or veggies, but we don’t need to go crazy. That might be my first line of advice is if we can eat at home and control what’s going in our cart, what’s going on our plate, I think that’s a really good start.

Is there anything to be said about frozen veggies versus fresh veggies, and same with fruit?

They’re all great. So it’s fair to acknowledge that fresh is best. It’s going to have the most nutrients. But I think a lot of people look at canned or frozen as, oh, that’s not as good or that’s not good for me.

Frozen is actually quite comparable to fresh. It’s often been, especially vegetables, maybe like steamed quickly than frozen. It really retains a lot of the same nutrient value.

And fruit, I mean, it’s like practically the same canned. It’s fair to say, yeah, it’s lost maybe a little bit in the processing. It’s had some things added to preserve, whether that’s salt or sugar. But is it still a fruit or vegetable? Yes, it’s still absolutely is a positive addition to a diet.

So I think, yeah, if we can do fresh, cool. Sometimes of the year or depending on budget, that might not be realistic. And if that’s the case, then absolutely include fresh, frozen, even dried, canned. The whole gambit is helpful.

So AI is another hot topic obviously. And now it’s becoming a huge part of the health and wellness space. You have the Fitbit, you have Oura Ring. People are tracking calories macros through MyFitnessPal.

I know AI isn’t always 100% accurate. But what tips do you have as a dietician as far as using AI to meal plan or track calories, et cetera?

I think there’s definitely probably some helpful use cases. I think one that comes to mind that I’ve seen done that I think could be pretty cool for people is helping manage that grocery list creation, managing chronological use if you will like with what’s in your fridge. I hope that people could use it to learn to do some of that themselves.

I think generally I feel that way about AI of like, let’s not rely solely on that. Use it as a tool, but also use your brain. I think that could be a pretty cool use is like, I’ve got X, Y, and Z in my fridge and pantry, what could I make with this?

Or I’d like to make XYZ recipes. What would my grocery list look like? I think some of that stuff could absolutely be helpful to people. Those are probably maybe the easiest low hanging fruit uses that I have seen personally used.

Or even just meal prepping. I’ve had some athletes where we used AI to make like a guide for them, something that they could do at home. I’m going to prep five days worth of meals. How would I scale this recipe? Things like that I think could be helpful.

Do you ever see with your athletes them obsessing over how many steps they get or tracking their food?

Yes. We live a really delicate balance in our world. When you’re talking elite level athletes, it’s fair to say that we want them to be tuned in to what they’re eating. And of course, they’re tracking all kinds of things anymore.

We’ve got Oura Rings, we’ve got WHOOP Bands, we’ve got Apple Watches in the mix. We’ve got all these things which are helpful, but we do have to balance that world of, how can we use this to help but not to the detriment where we’re obsessing? So on our end, we try to be really cautious of and mindful of, how can we use this?

But if we ever feel like it’s getting to where they’re obsessing about it, then we would probably pull back. We might restrict some of the data they can see or different things like that. Because, yeah, you want it to be a helpful tool, but it can absolutely slide into detriment.

Let’s talk about your day-to-day. So you manage the nutrition for Purdue volleyball, soccer, basketball. What is it like working with these student athletes? How do you plan their meals? Sometimes you’re traveling with the teams, tell us what that’s like.

Yeah, I think one of the things I’ve always loved about my job is that every day is different. So it really depends on what time of year we’re in, what sports obviously you work with. At one point I worked with all 18 sports when it was just me as the first full time. Now we have eight like I mentioned. So we have been really able to divide and conquer, if you will.

But day-to-day is going to be a mix of all things. So we do a lot of one-on-one consultations. So that’s like sitting with the athlete across the desk, talking about you name it, anything regarding nutrition.

We do a lot of team education, so that could be really casual. Often it is really casual, quickly after a lift or before a practice starts. Sometimes it’s a little more formal. We’re sitting in the team room with slides behind us.

So we do a lot of team education, we do body composition testing. So we do that three times a year on our athletes. We have a DEXA machine on site. So we manage that data.

What else do we do? All kinds of things supplements. Anything supplement wise, we are running point on that. So might be distributing or managing that operation.

Food service is quite prevalent in our world. So we have fueling stations, we oversee those areas. We have a dining hall these days, which we’re quite lucky to have. And so we’re doing the menu planning on that, we’re up and around that space a lot, working with our athletes up there. Those are probably some of the big ones.

So I think, again, it totally depends. Traveling, tomorrow I leave with soccer, so we’ll be on the road all day tomorrow. And that tends to be more hands-on nutrition, if you will. So making sure our heavy sweaters are hydrating appropriately, making sure that pregame and postgame recovery are happening, helping with meals. So there’s a lot of moving parts.

Right now, though, we’re in post-summer craziness with preseasons starting, camp is starting, so it is all hands-on deck. A lot of hands-on nutrition food service type activities.

So the performance athletics dining facility at Purdue is really first class. And you talked about the meals, the different fuel stations, the different technology. How does that set Purdue apart from other Big Ten universities?

Yeah, we’re super lucky. We’re going into our third year of being in the dining hall. And we are really lucky not only to have the space, but our administration has really leaned in and said like, yep, this is going to be an advantage for us.

So we do three meals a day, Monday through Friday for all of our athletes, which is huge, and it’s quite competitive in the Big Ten and even the Power Four. So that’s a big recruiting bonus for us and a performance bonus. So we really lean into that space.

Again, the space itself is a huge tool, but then we work really closely with the culinary team. Actually, one of the eight dietitians that I’ve mentioned is performance culinary RD. So her whole job revolves around the dining hall and making sure that our recipes are accurate, that we have education up, that we’re incorporating performance cooking techniques. I’m quite thankful that we have that facility. And like I said, and the support to really use it how we can.

Give us an example of a meal there.

I always point out, when I walk through the building with recruits, that you will always be able to find a lean carbohydrate, a lean protein, lots of fruits and veggies. So that is a goal. But you’ll also find lots of fun foods too.

We’re asking our athletes to eat there 15 times a week and just like you and I like, we would not want to eat chicken, broccoli, and rice every meal. So we try to have a variety of things available that can meet that need for the athlete who’s like, I’m locked in right now. I’m in the pinnacle of my season and I really want to be lean and focused on that.

But you’re also going to see pizza, you’re going to see wing Wednesday, you’re going to see Taco Tuesday. We try to incorporate fun foods as well. So you can find practically anything up there.

And Lauren is going to give us a tour of PAD. So stay tuned to our podcast YouTube channel. So we’re excited about that.

And I read an article that you were talking about, obviously, a volleyball player is going to eat differently than a football player. So briefly, tell us about how you guys differentiate between different athletes when it comes to athlete performance and what you feed them and how you fuel them.

One of the biggest challenges with a space like our dining hall is that you’re trying to meet the needs of not only 18 different teams who are all in different seasons, but you’re also trying to meet the needs of the person who, like I said, maybe is really needing to lock in. It might be the wrestler who’s trying to get his weight down for weigh-ins this weekend. And you also have the football player who needs to eat 7,000 calories to keep his weight up.

So it is a hard balance. We have a lot of international student athletes. So we try to incorporate different menu items that they might recognize. So when people think about menuing, it’s a whole thing to try to menu for our needs.

But to your question, I think some of it comes down to coaching. So that’s why we try to be up there and it’s helping that athlete. You’re walking the line with them and saying, hey, remember we’ve got this coming up. So let’s maybe tone that down or increase this.

For the athlete who’s really trying to get a ton of calories in, we try to have things additional that they can add. So it might be toppings, cheese, sauces. We have lots of smoothie options available. We try to have ways that they can layer on calories if they need to or get it from beverages, things like that. Or we have ways that we can try to keep it really lean if that’s the goal too.

So I’d love to learn more about your journey to Purdue athletics. You went to Purdue, you played soccer at Purdue, you were part of the 2007 Big Ten Championship winning team. That’s awesome. So what initially drove your passion for nutrition and health in that space?

I think my family was one part of it. Just seeing family members struggle with weight or nutrition, that drove some curiosity of how could this help impact people’s health? And then when I got to Purdue, I was lucky that I chose dietetics off the bat, and especially being an athlete, that really tied together, how could this help me perform?

So I think it was just natural. I got lucky in the sense that I started in it and loved it. But that combination of how can nutrition help our health? How can it help our performance? That was like a natural progression then to being interested in sports nutrition.

And how did you come back and start working for Purdue athletics?

I mean, honestly, sometimes the stars align a little bit. When I finished my dietetic internship, I had always wanted to do sports nutrition, but at the time there was very few people doing what I do now full time. I always tell people there were single digit people working full time in collegiate athletics as a dietician when I was in school. Now we have eight at Purdue. So just to illustrate how much it’s grown.

So I wanted to do it, but I didn’t figure there would be many jobs. So I went into clinical nutrition first. I did that for about a year. And at that time, Purdue had two part time dietitians that were working in the athletic department. One of them left.

I had obviously connections with Purdue. So I was calling like, who are you going to hire for that part time? And luckily, I had some inroads with the other dietician. She was my mentor, still a friend, mentor, and she still teaches on campus, Rachel Clark.

So I reached out to Rachel and was like, hey, I could be there tomorrow. And so I got that part time position and was able– in the first probably six-ish months, we were really pushing for full time. And so then in 2014, I was our first full time. So we transitioned to that to be our first full time and then it’s grown from there.

And as a former student athlete yourself, that transition between being a college athlete and transitioning to the real world, you’re an expert at that. And I know that’s really important to you. So you started a transitional program called BLAST or Boiler Life After SporT. Tell us a little bit about that program.

The BLAST program was started by myself and Cathy Wright-Eger at the time. And I will say a lot of it has since been absorbed into our athlete development programming because now we have a whole department that does that, which is awesome.

So the program was founded on four pillars, I will call them, nutrition and fitness being obviously the one I’m passionate about, financial literacy, which is a big piece of what our athletes maybe struggle with, identity and mental health and professional development. So that was our goal with that. And like I said, a lot of those now are happening via other methods.

So the actual BLAST program has seeped into different things, but we still do some of that nutrition and fitness stuff as well. So every year we’ve got a seminar or I’ll call it a workshop, maybe for our juniors and seniors on how we can transition out of sport when it comes to nutrition and fitness. We try to do some different exposure activities, try a workout that’s not related to your sport out in the community. And so things like that are some of those things that we still do in that space that we’re from the BLAST program originally.

And then, like I said, a lot of those financial literacy, all our teams are doing a ton with that and more professional development. They’re doing a ton with that, even identity, mental health. We have now three full time psychologists on staff. So a lot of it has grown into it’s baked in now. But that was how we started.

We’re talking about mental health and that’s the perfect transition. Why is nutrition aimed at enhancing both physical and mental health of these student athletes? Why is that vital?

I think really it just comes down to the holistic nature of it. I mean, they’re a whole person, and sometimes it gets really focused on, you’re an athlete and we’re trying to perform and we’re trying to win, which is totally the case. But they can’t perform if they’re not well.

And so I think we talk about that a lot in our space is this almost pyramid approach, if you will. You have to have the foundation. And in our world, the foundation is they have to be healthy and they have to be well before we can start focusing then on performance. I can’t get you to perform better if we’re not well, whether that’s you’re sick all the time or you’re struggling with something mentally or what have you. I think it’s important to look at the whole picture.

It’s early August. Any athletics predictions as we head into the school year?

I think everyone is excited about all of our fall sports. I think we’ll surprise some people. In some, volleyball, their level is so high, their ceiling is high, but the floor is really high too. So yeah, I mean, I think we’re all excited. I think it’s going to be a good fall in West Lafayette.

Thank you, Lauren.

Thanks for having me.

That was such an incredible conversation. And it’s clear Lauren is very passionate about what she does here at Purdue. Remember, you can check out Lauren’s tour of the Performance Athletics Dining facility on our podcast YouTube page by heading over to youtube.com/@thisispurdue and be sure to click that Subscribe button while you’re over there.

This Is Purdue is brought to you by Purdue brand studio. The podcast is hosted and produced by me, Kate Young. The creative team behind the shows videography, design, and writing and research includes Thad Boone, John Garcia, Cheryl Glotzbach, Ashvini Malshe, John Underwood, and Delaney Young. Social media marketing is led by Maria Welch and our project manager is Rain Gu.

Thanks for listening to This Is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at Purdue.edu/podcast, and head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe today so you never miss an episode. You can also check out all of our podcast video content on our YouTube page at youtube.com/@thisispurdue. And as always, boiler up.

“This Is Purdue” America250xMED 

President Daniels, thank you so much for joining us on This is Purdue, our second time together. We’re excited to welcome you back.  

Didn’t expect to be, but I’m glad to be back.  

You can see we’re celebrating America’s 250th with our set here today. But we’re going to dive in to Purdue’s role in our nation’s growth and evolution, and it’s a really special episode, so we’re just thrilled to have you join us today. So major milestones like this always offer us a moment of reflection and consideration. From your perspective, what does America’s 250th birthday signify for the country, for the state of Indiana and for Purdue University?  

I hope it will mean some very serious and thoughtful reflection on the part of Americans who in recent years, have focused on their differences and on what we imagine to be difficulties. Here we are living in the richest, healthiest, best educated, safest world anyone has ever imagined, but too many Americans are troubled and not happy, even in the midst of all this plenty. And I hope that this will be a time consistent with other things we celebrate– birthdays, anniversaries– where we accentuate the positive, as the song used to say, and which we recognize our blessings.  

Recognize, if we look back at history, we’ve had all sorts of troubled times before, some much worse than today. And we got through them. We got through them because of our free institutions, and our inclusiveness and our trust in each other. So I hope that’s what this year brings, and I hope that Purdue, whatever else the rest of the world is doing, will celebrate it in that spirit.  

So land grant universities like Purdue have always played a special role in our nation’s evolution. We’re making college education more accessible. We’re driving economic growth. What does Purdue’s commitment to our land grant legacy mean to you as a university leader?  

It quickly became the most important value and objective to me when I first came here years ago. And it’s a timely question. It’s so consistent with what we’re celebrating this year. The Morrill Act can be seen as one of the great triumphs in domestic policy in American history. And what’s it about? It’s about widening the opportunities for ordinary people. That’s America.  

There’s never been an engine in human history as effective at lifting people up, giving opportunities to people if they had the diligence, and the persistence, and the personal responsibility to take advantage of those opportunities. And that’s what land grant schools were created to do. And to me, it’s the proudest and most important part of Purdue’s mission today. It means something different today, but it’s the central value of– it’s still the one we’ve always had at the core of our mission.  

How do the newer additions, like Purdue Global, Purdue Polytechnic High School fit into that mission as well?  

That’s such an important question. They to me, they define, or certainly part of the definition of what the land grant mission means in the 21st century. We entered the online era ahead of most, specifically because we couldn’t stop at age 22, or 25 or 26 anymore. The whole world knows that success individually, and the success of our society depends a lot on lifelong learning, probably, but certainly continuous learning.  

And too many people had been left out. Just as too many people were left out in 1869–  

Sure.  

–of higher ed, these days, there are twice as many people who started college and didn’t finish, not even talking about those who never attended college. Then all the students on all the four year campuses. And so we said to ourselves, we can’t be a modern land grant school and ignore this responsibility and this opportunity. And I’m just so proud of the people of Purdue Global now getting close to what? To 100,000 or something degrees that they have conferred.  

And you go to one of those commencements, I love that we’re having them on campus now so people here can meet these single moms and grandparents, and folks with all these other challenges and duties in life who are achieving the dream of a degree because of the people of Purdue Global. So yeah, and the high school, much the same. We simply weren’t satisfied at all with the variety, diversity of young people who were achieving admission to Purdue University, and so we decided to try to grow some of our own pipeline to augment what– sorry to say– the public schools were failing to provide.  

What values set Purdue apart as an innovative leader in higher education, free speech and civil discourse?  

It’s also sad to say that simply respecting the laws, values, constitutional rights of people in this country, that shouldn’t set you apart. But unfortunately, in American higher ed, for the last two or three decades, it did set you apart. Simply to say, we’re going to have free inquiry on this campus. We are not going to silence people because they don’t pay lip service to somebody’s idea of norms and values, that these are– the campus exists to be a place where these things are debated, so young people in particular can sample different points of view and make up their own minds.  

And too much of Americans, I read, seemed to have lost sight of that. I don’t think we ever really did at Purdue, but by staking or reasserting, this is central to our job as an institution of learning that people seem to take note of it, and that’s fine. A large part of the job here was to get people to pay more attention to the wonderful qualities of Purdue University, and that was part of it.  

What are some actionable ways that Purdue is building upon its long standing and ongoing commitment to academic freedom, public impact, civic responsibility?  

From the day a young person walks on this campus at BGR, I hope they’re hearing about it, learning about it. I hope it attracted many of them. In fact, I know this because I’ve heard this from students over the years. Many students came to Purdue because they perceived that they’d be more free to sample opinions. They’d hear a wider range of opinions. They could express their own opinions without fear of being ostracized or somehow repressed.  

But starting at the Boiler Gold Rush, we talked to students about this imperative value of the academic mission and encouraged them to exercise these rights. And I think that most of them get the message. I know they welcome it when they do. And of course, at the other end, we have a civics requirement here. It’s not onerous, but it says to young people and to the outside world that this is not just about preparing great workers, and business leaders, and engineers, and veterinarians.  

We do that, but we’re also trying to send out good citizens who have a sense of their duties and responsibilities. At the commencement, when I got to read the statement that confers the degrees, it talks about the rights, privileges, duties, and responsibilities of this degree. I always emphasize the last two words. Now, we’ve had a society where people were really quick to demand their rights and their privileges. OK, but they have to–  

We want young people to understand that there are duties and responsibilities that come with that. You earn those rights. And I’d like to think that Purdue is doing a good job of communicating and reinforcing those values.  

Absolutely. I think that’s a key theme of the podcast always. You can get a higher ed degree anywhere in the world. But when you run into Boilermakers out in the wild, they’re always saying how special it is and how unique this education is. And the people here are so special.  

We think that we think, but we think we have– everybody’s proud of their school.  

Sure.  

We think we have very valid reasons. You just expressed many of them. But they require effort these days. Again, something I’m sad to say, a lot of young people didn’t get much sense of that on their way to Purdue. Maybe they got it at home, but in too many of our, particularly, public schools, they didn’t learn any history or much. They may or may not have been given any sense of civic responsibility and why our free institutions need constant tending, why they work best, once again, for lifting people to the extent that their people take advantage of those freedoms.  

The state of higher ed is rapidly changing. There’s different factors, affordability, AI, free speech, like we talked about. How do you think this has impacted the public trust in higher education?  

One thing nobody can overlook is there’s been a collapse in public trust, and it’s very unfortunate. We need a well-functioning and highly regarded higher education system. It’s not for everybody, but it’s absolutely the right path for large numbers of young people coming up. And just as for a long time, maybe we encouraged too many people. We said this is the only way to get a good start in life.  

We don’t want to discourage young people, and I’m afraid that the climate has– the current environment has, to some extent, takes that risk. The reasons are not hard to identify. I always say it’s value and values. Number one, people began to question rightly, am I being charged too much for whatever I’m learning there? And secondly, in too many places people say, well, I’m being indoctrinated or having values imposed on me that I’m not sure I agree with.  

And I’d like at least the chance to argue back or explore others. So I think we’ve got a lot of repair work to do, and I think Purdue can be proud of its record on both those fronts, value and values. And it’s good to see a lot of other schools move in that direction now. Really, it couldn’t happen soon enough.  

What would you say to young people today who are trying to decide, is college for me? Should I pursue this? What are some of the most important factors that they should weigh?  

Well, the two ideas mentioned, I think a starting point, try to look for a place where there’s a good– where there seems to be some sensitivity to cost and a commitment, though, to quality, and then also, the open environment of free inquiry that we’ve been talking about. But the other thing I would tell them to do is go look at the Gallup Purdue Index, which was done now over a decade ago.  

The basic lesson that came out of this biggest ever survey of college graduates, what helped them succeed? The simplest lesson was that it matters less where you go than how you go, meaning how diligent a student is, whether they’re given the opportunity to, for instance, do undergraduate research, whether they take the opportunity to build a relationship with at least one faculty member, simple things like this. Now, if you do those things at a place like Purdue, you are almost certain to succeed. But wherever a young person feels most comfortable, I hope that they’ll apply themselves in that way.  

Years ago, our own students came up with a formulation. I never improved on it. I repeated it to other classes, and it was 4, 3, 2, 1, as I recall. Graduate in four years or less, try to maintain a 3.0 grade average, easy in some places, not so easy at Purdue. Two, study two hours or more for every hour in class. And be very active, not casually, but very active in at least one extracurricular activity. That is a terrific formula, no matter where a student enrolls.  

I love that. That shows belonging if you’re not just going to classes, but you’re involved in other things. So switching gears, I’d love to discuss the transition into your new role as Purdue’s interim president. You’re not a stranger to the role as president of Purdue. But as we conduct our national search for the next president, how do you view your leadership role as you guide Purdue through this transitional period?  

Well, I’ve never had a role quite like this. And so I want to be thoughtful about how to approach it. And I’ve asked a couple people who have done this before. My sense is, one thing I need to do is try to ensure that important initiatives on which the previous leadership and the board have agreed move forward without hiccups or interruption. It’s not a time. I’m not making a promise here, but it’s probably not a time to be creating new ideas.  

I’ll try to resist the temptation if it comes, because I hope that another service I can assist with in this job is standby equipment, emergency generator, relief pitcher, whatever metaphor you like– is to make the transition as short as possible. Sometimes say my main goal is to get out of this job as fast as possible, meaning that Purdue has a great new leader, and she or he gets a head start if I can help with that.  

Absolutely. What are your top priorities as interim president?  

Well, of course, first of all, to maintain the standards that we’ve talked about, make sure that students here are getting good value for their money, that they’re in a place of open inquiry. I hope to see a little more definition, especially in this 250th year around citizenship, history and so forth. We might be able to do a little more than we already do to make sure that students here are well prepared for their life as citizens later.  

I’ll be very specific about one thing. That’s Indianapolis. Huge opportunity for our extended campus in Indianapolis, and I don’t think enough of our applicants or enough of current students have seen this yet. The whole opportunity and the reason we went there is to augment. It’s not a replacement for the West Lafayette experience. It’s supposed to be West Lafayette plus, meaning maybe you spend one year or two there where we can absolutely assure an internship, a first job in a wide variety of occupations, businesses, and otherwise.  

And so I think we’ve been a little slow out of the blocks on this, just because I don’t think we’ve communicated to students and their families how it broadens the opportunities. And so I want to work on that, and I’m very excited about the upside.  

Absolutely. And you have the Lilly’s, you have the NCAA, all the sports and Indy that they can get internships and have that chance.  

We created Discovery Park District here very specifically to try to bring top businesses close to campus to work with our researchers, but also to create internships, job opportunities for our students. But there’s a limit to how much we can do right here. There’s a built-in network of businesses– believe me, I’ve talked to them for years– who are eager to have access to more Boilermakers, and runs the spectrum from the big companies, the Lilly, and Elanco, and Roche, and so forth on one end, down to the startups that are blossoming down there, and everything in between.  

And this is an opportunity we need to seize for our students, current and future.  

What do you believe Purdue needs in its next president that it didn’t need 15 years ago? I’m curious.  

A real grasp of what the new technologies are and the changes they’re going to bring. I think as much as is said and written every day now about artificial intelligence and how revolutionary it is, I think many people are under-appreciating the impact it may have, and sooner than we think. So in addition to many other qualities that I suppose have always been important, but a real grasp of, first of all, how to use these technologies to deliver our service better, more efficiently on the administrative front, perhaps much more effectively in terms of the way we teach and using these tools effectively there.  

But also, may have to completely change the whole notion of a campus. Whether in 10 years or even less it will still make sense for this many students to come here and spend this much time residentially, I rather hope so, but AI could change that. And we need somebody who can navigate that, whatever changes it brings.  

As Purdue’s 12th president, you are known for championing a frozen tuition policy, famously. And it’s a legacy that President Chiang continued during his time here as well. It’s now in its 14th year. How do you reflect back on that legacy today?  

With a smile, because I never imagined– it shook people up, the board, and certainly people on the staff and all. When I said, how about a one-year time out? It looks to me like we could do that. It sent a signal that we’re here. Remember, I had just spent really 10 years traveling this state, which is a very diverse state. And I knew that people, even then, were very restless about the cost of higher ed going up, and up, and up every year.  

So when I look back, I was pretty sure we could skip a year, maybe two. But people got the spirit of it here. And I also was completely– I smiled because I thought at the time, gosh, the market’s going to demand this of schools. And if we don’t start to show some restraint about our prices, somebody’s going to make us do it. I was wrong. There were many more years where the rest of higher ed just kept going up, and up, and up.  

Go look at the difference now. They were about the same then. Go look at the difference in full cost of attendance, not just tuition fees. Everything with room, board, and so forth between us and that school down south. It’s 6,000 or 7,000 per year now. So the rest of the world, to my surprise, took a while to get the message. They’re getting it now, or sometimes state legislatures or somebody’s sending it to them.  

But I’m very proud of it. It became a brand, a trademark. There’s no other school like it, and people know about it. So it at least captures the attention of people. And by the way, I think it’s been a driver, we know this, in the growth of Purdue, which in turn has helped us to maintain the affordability policy.  

You mentioned other schools never really caught on. Why do you think it was possible at Purdue, and other institutions couldn’t make it happen?  

They’d have to answer that question. I do think that it was– again, I think it was very consistent with our mission. How do we keep the doors wide open? How do we open the doors of higher ed more? And this was certainly consistent with that. And then again, I could just tell within a couple three years, people were proud of it. It made us stand out, and that’s always good, but in a way that was, again, that I think particularly, Boilermakers felt was reflective of who we are.  

And so I know our alums were– obviously, our students and their families were glad. And the word spread, and the citizens of our state knew about it, and they were positive. So I think it generated a momentum of its own. Now, why that didn’t happen at other schools, they didn’t try in some cases.  

Why has that commitment to accessibility always been so important to Purdue?  

Well, we talked about it. Why were we put here? And anything we can do to make the advantages of our unique service, when done well, our uniquely valuable service available to more people, Purdue Global, the Polytechnic High School as a way in to the work our regionals do, and affordability, of course, that’s all just absolutely part and parcel of our identity.  

This has been a topic of conversation on the podcast previously, and we’ve talked about it throughout our conversation today. But what are your hopes for the future value of higher education and its broader role across the state and the country?  

That higher ed will conclude– this is not an either/or proposition. I read things, hear people debating. They say, well, they’re treating it as vocational school. It’s all about getting a job. And it really needs to be about preparing people to be critical thinkers, and participatory citizens and so forth. It’s not one or the other. I hope the future, if people can continue to invest in it the way they have and the way we hope they will, then I think it’s got to serve both missions.  

It’s not that hard, I really don’t think. And I think we’re doing pretty well here. I’d like to see us do even better. I want our engineers– if they didn’t if they don’t enroll in the cornerstone program, and our computer scientists, and our pharmacists, and all our STEM people, I want them to do something comparable so that they learn. They learn the context of all the great technical advances and so forth they’re going to be contributing to.  

I want to be able to read, and write, and reflect, and know. In the AI world, having a antenna that tell you when something’s bogus, never going to be so important. This is what we call critical thinking.  

Yes.  

How do you know if you’re being fed a line or peddled something that’s tendentious or slanted? Well, now that’s a bigger challenge than ever. So we got to walk and chew the gum and prepare people to be great, productive workers wherever they’re going, but also smart, savvy citizens who can make sure that their freedoms that are making all the rest of this progress possible are not trespassed, either by other people or by the machines we’ve built.  

At Purdue, we love to talk about Amelia Earhart and Neil Armstrong. They’re key figures in American history. Who are the historical figures from Purdue who inspire you?  

All of them. But let’s take our Nobel Prize winners, professors Negishi and Brown. And I’m going to lay claim to Vernon Smith, a great economist who did this real work here. He got the prize when he was, by then, somewhere else. But these intellectual, these great figures off our faculty, that’s really the heart of the product that we try to produce here. And so yes, of course, I think of Amelia, and Neil, and our other astronauts, and so forth, yeah, sure, and the great business leaders we put out. But my first thoughts go to the towering intellectual figures who made Purdue their home.  

Well, President Daniels, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for joining us. Is there anything else that you’d like to tell our listeners or viewers?  

Just that I’m proud to be back in my spare tire role, but I’m going to do my very best to get out of it quickly and hand the reins back to somebody who will be wiser than I about the ways to take Purdue forward, make sure the next era is even better than the last.  

I don’t think anyone thinks of you as a spare tire. I do have to put that on the record. Well, thank you again. It was a pleasure.  

I enjoyed it.

This is Drew Brees, and you are listening to This Is Purdue.  

Welcome to This is Purdue, the university’s official award-winning podcast. I’m Kate Young, your host and a proud Purdue alumna. This is Purdue is all about sharing big ideas that spark broad interest and get people talking. We’re passionate about highlighting notable Boilermakers who are powering innovation and working together to solve today’s toughest challenges.  

Tune in to each episode as we have engaging conversations with Purdue alumni, faculty, researchers, coaches, and more who are inspiring change through small steps every day across timely topics like sports, well-being, emerging tech, and life changing research. Join us as we discover how these Boilermakers are taking their next giant leap.  

I feel like I was given this platform for a reason. It was to be able to make our mark, leave things better than we found it, and to make it better for the next generation. Look, if we all take that mindset, then we will always see constant improvement. And you’re going to be equipping the next generation to do great things.  

In this episode of This is Purdue, we’re talking to Drew Brees. That’s right, the Drew Brees. Former boilermaker quarterback, Super Bowl MVP, NFL legend, philanthropist, entrepreneur, and now Pro Football Hall of Famer. Our podcast team had the chance to sit down with Drew when he was back on campus receiving his honorary doctor of business from the Mitch Daniels School of Business during the spring 2026 commencement in May.  

In this episode, you’ll hear about Drew’s experience as a Boilermaker, how he was first recruited by Purdue, how he met his wife, Brittany, and why they continued to give back to their beloved alma mater. Drew shares his take on the current landscape of NIL and the importance of persistence, loyalty, and culture in college sports. He also shares the adversity he’s faced as an athlete and the leadership lessons he’s learned along the way.  

Plus, he discusses what’s next for him after a 20-year career in professional football and his hopes for the future of Purdue. So let’s get to it. Here’s my conversation with Drew. Drew, thank you so much for joining us on This is Purdue. I said, it’s like a morning talk show, bright and early for us.  

Yeah, and I’ve got my real coffee in the coffee mug here, so–  

I love it.  

–I’m ready to go.  

[LAUGHS]  

Yeah.  

Well, we’ve been prepping for this interview a lot differently, because we’ve been wanting to have you on the show for the past five years. You’re just so beloved here. And I just want to know, and I think all of our listeners and viewers want to know, what’s it like to come back to campus?  

I always love coming back to campus so much. First off, it feels like home. Even though being a Texas kid and never thinking that I’d leave the state of Texas, every second I’m on campus, there’s just so many great memories from every part of it. Even as it continues to evolve and grow, I mean, even now just driving down the street, I’m sitting there looking at the new nursing and pharmacy building, of course, the Mitch Daniels School of Business building going to be ready fall of 27. It’s fun to see things continue to grow and evolve and continue to get better and better. But I would expect nothing less from Purdue. That’s what we’ve always prided ourselves on, continuing to do things that make this one of the greatest institutions in the country.  

Walk us through a typical day when you’re back on campus. Like, what are you taking your family to go see, go do, go eat?  

Yeah. Well, it was funny. We got in last night, and we have our two middle sons with us. And first thing we did was basically [LAUGHS] drive down Northwestern, of course. And you’re looking at the football offices, and you’re seeing Mackey Arena, and you make your way around to Harry’s chocolate shop. And when the kids say, hey, mom, dad, what did you guys used to do there?  

[LAUGHTER]  

No. But just past there is actually where Brittany and I met for the first time, was just walking down the street. So that was pretty funny. We got to rehash that story, going to our favorite Jimmy John’s. The kids are very familiar with Jimmy John’s.  

Yes.  

Yeah. So we got a couple number nines, Italian nightclubs, and then just kept driving around campus. Drove by the Sigma Chi house, some great memories there as the Sigma Chi. And honestly, it seems like every corner that you turn, there’s a story to tell the kids. And they’re sitting on the edge of their seat. They love it.  

I love that. So let’s dig into how you and Brittany met. We love a good love story on the podcast, so tell us the details.  

Oh, boy. Well, technically, the first time we met was the winter of 1999. And there was about 10 feet of snowbank on the side of the street and in parking lots. I think we just got a lot of snow that winter. And it was actually my 19th birthday. So I was with a bunch of guys on the football team, and we were getting kind of rowdy. But we were literally in the parking lot. I think we were wrestling in the snow banks.  

And I just remember seeing this girl walk across the parking lot. It was the 1010 apartment. It was at 1010 Washington. A bunch of the guys stayed there, and a bunch of students stayed there. And so it was almost like a block party. Everybody’s just walking around free flowing, and I see it from across the parking lot. I just remember looking at her and saying, I’m going to marry that girl. And everybody was like, you’re an idiot.  

And so I went up, and I talked to her. And I don’t even remember what I said, but I think I made a fool of myself. And so it was funny because that was the first time I’d ever seen her anywhere on campus. And then I literally saw her every week after that throughout the entire spring semester. And I would see her from a distance and be like, how do I redeem myself? Because I think I made a complete fool of myself.  

And so finally, it was that summer. We were all back for summer school, and we bumped into each other on the street, I think, in front of what used to be, where else, or the boiler room or in that corridor, and just started talking again. And I think I convinced her to give me a second chance.  

And the rest is history.  

And the rest is history. That’s right.  

What was it like to be a student in the late ’90s, early 2000? No cell phones. A lot different back then, right?  

Yeah. I think all of us can reference the era pre-cell phone was quite a bit different. You actually had to make plans as to where you were going to meet people. It was fun. I started off in Wiley Hall as a freshman, and then it was Hilltop apartments. We drove by those as well yesterday as sophomores. And then as juniors, we actually went across the river, and we were in downtown, Lafayette. We had a cool apartment there.  

And then I was over in that, what, Peppermill apartments as a senior. So lived a couple different places. And quite honestly, I feel like everybody on the team had their different spots that we would always congregate. And so you feel like you just made your way all around campus and even on the outskirts. It was so much fun. I think some of my greatest memories were just walking through campus, especially in the fall. It was football season, so there was an energy, there was an excitement. The leaves were changing color. The bell tower is ringing, and you just felt like something great was happening.  

So those quintessential college memories.  

Absolutely.  

You talked a little bit about how Purdue was changing, and you’re showing your kids that. But what ways do you think Purdue’s remain the same?  

It really still feels very much just like a small college town where everyone around Lafayette and West Lafayette supports Purdue University. And whatever’s happening here, they’re engaged with. And I think that’s something that you really appreciate. Purdue doesn’t feel like a big school. I mean, we are. We’ve got a lot of students, both undergrad and graduate and international students. And so it’s very diverse in that way. But you don’t feel like it’s overwhelming, and you also feel so supported.  

And I think you always feel like things are happening here that are always in the best interest of the University, of the students to continue to push Purdue forward, to continue to advance the degrees that we’re all seeking to achieve. And then what I’ve found, too, is, in life after Purdue is that the Purdue network is strong. Everywhere I go, I meet Purdue people, in all different sectors, in all different industries, in tons of positions of leadership, which is also really encouraging because really feel like Purdue is developing the next generation of leaders.  

I love that, you’ve stayed so involved with the University since you’ve graduated. You’ve come back, you’ve come to this podcast. We so appreciate it. But what inspires you and Brittany to continue to give back to your alma mater?  

We love it here so much, and I think we know that our most formative years were spent here. And that Purdue developed our character, and, I think, made us appreciate so many things. And so we always want to give back to the University that gave so much to us. And look, I think it’s all of our responsibilities to leave it better than when we found it and to want to continue to advance it forward and make it better for the future generations so that hopefully, they feel the same way. And that’s how you continue to make progress. So we will always give back to Purdue University.  

This year’s May commencement ceremony represents that pinnacle of your connection between Purdue and you as an alum. What’s it like for you to be back here and recognized with that honorary doctorate in business from the Mitch Daniels School of Business?  

Yeah. It was very unexpected. President Mung Chiang called me up and said, we would like to bestow this honor upon you. And you’re kind of speechless for a while. You’re like, wow, this is absolutely incredible. Especially Mitch Daniels had such an impact on this University. And obviously, he’s now the namesake of the School of Business. Back when I graduated, it was the Krannert School of Business.  

And I think it just continues to show the evolution and how we as a University continue to want to push things forward, recognize those who have made such significant contributions, like former President Daniels. And honestly, I’m just honored and humbled. Never thought that this would be something that would be bestowed upon me, but it’s an incredible honor.  

So getting into the football side, you’re the first This is Purdue guest that was also on New Heights. We can–  

Oh, there we go. OK.  

I prepped for this interview by watching you on that. How enjoyable. But you’re arguably Purdue’s most famous athlete. But you were just coming from a small town in Texas, and Coach Tiller recruited you. What did you think the first time you arrived at Purdue in this small town in Indiana?  

Well, it was pretty funny. Being a Texas kid, you grow up with, I think, probably a narrow view of the world. The state of Texas is a big state. It’s bigger than most countries’ economies. And there was a ton of schools down there, too. That was the old Southwest Conference days. So growing up there in the ’80s and ’90s, it was all about University of Texas at Texas A&M. Both my parents went to Texas A&M, so I wanted to be an Aggie, hands down.  

But I grew up in Austin, literally six blocks away from University of Texas campus. So we would walk to UT home football games, buy the cheap Bleacher seats, and I watched some epic games in the ’90s. And so you’re around that atmosphere. And then the other schools in Texas, Rice, Houston, SMU, Baylor, TCU, Texas Tech, I mean, the list goes on. Massive state, tons of institutions in the state of Texas.  

So I think in my mind, especially as your friends begin to start talking about colleges, you’re just, where am I going in the state of Texas? But I wanted to play sports. I wanted to play football. I wanted to play baseball. I was very athletic. And all of a sudden, you start realizing, well, nobody in the state of Texas is recruiting me.  

[LAUGHTER]  

And I’ll never forget the day at practice, which was December 22, 1996, where two coaches show up to our football practice as we’re getting ready for the state championship game, and it’s Purdue and Kentucky.  

Oh.  

And I remember our offensive coordinator coming over to me and tapped me on the shoulder and saying, those two schools are here to see you. And it was like, wow. And it was funny because when I first heard Purdue, I thought Ivy League, because it had such a great academic reputation. So I mean that as a great compliment, but I can’t say that I knew that it was in the state of Indiana, part of the Big Ten.  

But very quickly, I learned about the strong tradition around the cradle of quarterbacks. Certainly, it reinforced its strong academic reputation. But then it’s like, OK, I need to schedule a visit and check this place out. And so I come up here mid-December of 1990– no, sorry, mid-January of 1997. So Joe Tiller had just gotten the job, and he told me, he said, we were going to try to recruit you at Wyoming, but we didn’t think we’d have a chance at you, even though they had a strong Texas base when it came to recruiting. And he was actually surprised to see that I wasn’t getting recruited. And he said, all right, but I think we can get you at Purdue. And so he started recruiting me, brings me up mid-January of ’97.  

And I’m telling you, there was so much snow on the ground. All I’d heard was Purdue’s this beautiful campus, beautiful red brick buildings, John Purdue, you know. And I could not see the buildings, because there was so much snow. It was like blizzard conditions. And it’s funny, because we drove by the Pike house, and that was like the first college party that I went to. I mean, I remember Nick Zitelli was my host. And we go to this party there and I’m like, wow, this is what college is like?  

It was fun on one hand. And then the other hand, it was like, I’ve never seen this much snow. [LAUGHS]  

And cold.  

And I’ve never been exposed to this. Am I really going to do this? But truly, it was– I loved Coach Tiller. I loved the offense, spread offense. I love the feeling that we could do something the Big Ten that had never been done before and take this program from truly worst to first, as far as the way that we were being perceived. We were the last place recruiting class in the Big Ten that year. There was only about 12 of us that were recruited that year. I think maybe six of us hung on, and that’s a very tight group, as you can imagine, that group that stuck. And we were able to leave here as Big Ten champions, and more importantly, with incredible degrees and a connection to this University that will last forever.  

Yeah. Did you ever think about leaving when you weren’t the starting quarterback, or why did you think Purdue was the right fit? Why did you stay?  

See, it’s funny that you asked that question because we are in this era now with an island transfer portal that the natural feeling is that when you don’t get what you want, you can just up and leave. And that is the antithesis of what sports and especially college athletics is about. It’s about character and leadership development. So no, never in my mind did I ever think that leaving was an option. I am here to get a degree, first and foremost.  

And if I ever see the field, then great. I’m going to work my tail off. I’m going to do whatever the team needs me to be. I’m going to play the role that they need me to play, because your job on a team is to be the greatest teammate that you can be. And so, look, when I showed up here, there was seven quarterbacks. Did I think that I was going to play? No. But I also knew, you just take it one day at a time, and do whatever they ask you to do, and continue to improve. And it’s constant skill development, and it’s just constant improvement. There’s going to be plenty of days that you don’t get what you want.  

And maybe it’s because I face some disappointment in high school with injuries and different things, and so maybe I was a little ahead of the game just in regards to having to have overcome some adversity already. So I was programmed a little bit that way. There would be more in college. There was going to be plenty in the NFL. But to me, that’s the greatest thing about athletics, is you learn how to be a great teammate. You learn how to overcome adversity that comes in different ways. Failure, disappointment, not getting what you want, injury, you name it.  

I knew I was going to be here for four years, even when the opportunity came around to potentially leave early to go to the NFL. There was talk about that going into my junior year. To me, that was never an option. I said, first off, when we got here as freshmen, we said we were going to leave as Big Ten champs. We haven’t done that yet, so let’s go do that. And secondly, I want to make sure I get my degree.  

You’re probably especially proud then of Coach Painter and the–  

Absolutely.  

–team that he’s built and the loyal seniors we had.  

There’s nothing worse in college athletics than looking at a team and basically saying like, that team, all five of those starters were bought. They weren’t here the year before. We went out and just assembled a bunch of mercenaries to go in, and they just happened to be wearing a Jersey that had a university’s name on it. But you see that happening now everywhere.  

First off, how do you build team and culture that way? And in some cases, maybe guys just look at it as, I’m going to go get paid to play somewhere, and then I’m going to jump to the NBA. Basketball is a little different, just because they can leave earlier than football. But I think what Coach Painter has built here is incredible because he has truly built it on the foundation of team development, culture development, skill development, character development, leadership development.  

And I think guys appreciate that. Guys appreciate that. When they have a chance to be a part of that, it doesn’t mean there’s not going to be tough moments. There’s going to be plenty of tough moments, plenty of moments where you’re not getting what you want. If you talk to me long enough, that’s going to be a constant theme. Because I feel like my story, my career was a lot of instances of not getting what I wanted. My vision was, I was staying in the state of Texas. I knew nothing outside of the state of Texas, right?  

Yeah.  

But I did not get that opportunity, so I had to go seek that elsewhere. And Purdue opened up their arms to me to embrace me to be able to do that. And so I walk away from here with an incredible education, winning a Big Ten Championship, being formed in so many different ways. I go down to the San Diego Chargers, I get benched three times. Did I want that to happen? No. And then I have a major shoulder injury that I thought was going to end my career. Did I want that? No.  

New Orleans was the last place I ever thought I’d land. And then 15 years there was the most unbelievable experience of our life. And so all these instances, at the time you’re going through it, you’re saying, man, this is terrible. This isn’t the way I planned it. But God’s plan isn’t your plan. And it’s what forms you and molds you into who you were meant to be. And you become so thankful for it.  

But it’s also how– not only does it form you, but it forms the team. And you have a chance to imprint on them. You have a chance to impact them in a really positive way. And so then when it comes down to the real, tough moments, there’s a level of trust, between teammates. Hey, we’ve been here a long time together. We’ve stuck it out together. And I think that’s why you see the sustained success that our basketball program has had. A lot of that’s because of the atmosphere and the culture that Coach Painter has created. And then the players come in, and they buy into that, and they reinforce that, and they leave their mark on it.  

Absolutely. Speaking of forming a team, Coach Tiller is just as beloved among Purdue fans as you are. What types of things did you learn from him that you took into your NFL career?  

[LAUGHS] It’s funny. Coach Tiller would always say, we operate by the Golden rule. He who has the gold makes all the rules, and that’s me.  

[LAUGHTER]  

No. He would say that. But he had a good way to work in humor into his leadership techniques. I would say this. You woke up every day feeling like you had to prove it to coach Tiller. And maybe that’s just because of the environment that he stepped into in 1997. You have him turn a program around that hasn’t seen a winning season in 10 plus years and make sure everybody buys in, and that meant that not everybody was going to stay.  

That 1997, call it offseason, winter conditioning through spring ball, was very difficult. I think a lot of guys recognized that this wasn’t for them. But I mean, again, you have to set the tone everywhere I’ve been where it’s– Sean Payton did this in 2006 with the New Orleans Saints. He came in and recognized, hey, there’s some stuff that we need to clean up. And maybe there’s some guys that aren’t going to be a part of this because they haven’t fully bought in, and they’re not necessarily setting the right example. And if you’re not going to buy in, then we’ll show you the door. There’s somewhere else for you. It’s not going to be here.  

And so I know that that’s what happened with Coach Tiller. It happened during that training camp that year. But man, I tell you what, when we started that 1997 season, we felt like we had something. And you’re looking around the room, and every guy that’s there, you know he’s earned the right to be there, and he’s earned the respect of his teammates. And look, that starts from the top down. And so Tiller certainly made you feel like each and every day, you had to prove yourself to him. You had to prove yourself to your teammates. And I think that’s what helps create an edge.  

That team, you all won the Big Ten Championship. You wound up playing in the Rose Bowl. You talked, a lot of you all were there since you were freshmen, and you stayed all four years. What are some of your favorite memories from that season with that 2000 team?  

I don’t know if this has ever been done since that 2000 season, but our fans rushed the field three times in one season. You only play six or seven home games. You tell me half of them, they rushed the field, because it was just that level of mayhem in and around the game. The first one was Michigan. So Michigan comes to town. They were undefeated, I think 6 and 0. We were 3 and 2, and they were ranked fifth in the country.  

And I don’t know if you remember that game, but they had four possessions in the first half. We had three. And you go into halftime, we were losing 28. I remember walking at halftime– and look, like, man, you had built this game up so much, it was such a meaningful game. Because you felt if we’re going to win the Big Ten, we have to beat Michigan.  

And they got the ball four times, and they scored four touchdowns. So I just remember thinking to myself, OK. I was like, well, if they’re going to score a touchdown every time they get the ball, then we’re not going to have a chance. I said, but we just have to be so on point with everything that we do offensively. I mean, we had a touchdown, a field goal, and a punt. And 10 points, I felt OK about that. We’d scored two out of three possessions. But we’re down 28-10.  

And that’s when you just look at everybody and say, poise, composure, one series at a time. Defense just get a stop, offense, we have to score every time we touch the ball. And that’s not pressure. That’s just our responsibility. And we just chipped our way back, chipped our way back, and then we go down, and Travis Dorsch kicks the field goal. And then we rush the field, and I think Tim Stratton loses his helmet on the field somewhere, or a fan grabs it.  

And the next thing you know, the goalposts are coming down, and they’re walking them to the Wabash, and– no, I mean, that was a wild game. And then, of course, the Ohio State game, the finish to that game with the Seth Morales touchdown, and then fans rushed the field again, and the goalposts come down. And then, of course, we beat IU to officially win the Big Ten Championship a couple weeks later, and then we’re on our way to the Rose Bowl.  

And I’ll never forget that image with the roses in our mouth. I remember seeing that when I was a freshman with Charles Woodson when Michigan in 1997 went and won a national championship. But him having the rose in his mouth, I said, that’s the picture I want. And sure enough, we all got that picture.  

And now anytime you Google you, that’s one of the first pictures that comes up.  

That’s right.  

[LAUGHS] So your NFL career, outside of Boilermaker circles, you had this wonderful career with the New Orleans Saints. You also played for the Chargers. But really, you’re known for playing with the Saints. You had that incredible Super Bowl victory in 2009. And really, it was so special for the city of New Orleans because they were just starting to recover from Hurricane Katrina when you started in 2006. How do you feel about your role within the Saints and how the city was rebirthing at that time and recovering from an event like that?  

Yeah. Hard to believe, but that just 20 years ago now that we were all brought to New Orleans. I mean, truly, it was this offseason, this time 20 years ago, that all of us were arriving there for the first time, and really just trying to get our feet under us, understand the gravity of what had happened there, and understand that we were going to be a part of something that was so much greater than just football.  

And I think that that’s what made it unique. Is that at the time, we all had our own things that we were dealing with. I’m coming off a major shoulder injury. I remember one of my great friends on the team was a guy named Scott Fujita, who was a linebacker who was drafted by the Chiefs, then he went to the Cowboys, then he came to us and so many other guys who had similar stories to that where it was like, how they ended up in New Orleans is just a crazy sequence of events. And yet, they were the right person at the right time. And then collectively together, it became a really, really special group.  

And Sean Payton had so much to do with that, identifying those guys, knowing that it was going to take a special type of person and player to embrace the responsibility within the community that was beyond just the game of football. And look, we recognize that the best thing we could do is win games, because that just lifts everyone’s spirit. And there is such a diehard fan base down there, the Who Dat Nation, that I think everybody has come to know and love and embrace, and probably feel like they’re a part of.  

I think that 2006 season– and all started with the reopening of the dome September 25, 2006. The Superdome, obviously, sustained a ton of damage during Katrina. It became a symbol of refuge for so many people, because so many people ended up using that building as a place of safety for a long time. And so it needed significant repairs. And all of a sudden, here’s the reopening of the dome, Monday Night Football, September 25, 2006.  

And I think that’s when literally everybody, not just in the building, but outside the building watching that game on television, there was something that resonated with them about what the city was overcoming. There was a piece of that that, I think, lived inside of everybody and felt like we became America’s team after that where everybody’s– they were rooting for us.  

And so I think we felt that energy and tried to carry that with us on our way to the NFC Championship that year. And then a couple years later, we go and win a Super Bowl. And the culmination of just so many ups and downs during those four years as we were trying to come together as a team, but also find our place in the community and where we can make the biggest impact. And I’m proud to say that here we are 20 years later, and New Orleans has come back stronger than ever. It’s an incredible place, not just to visit, but to live, to raise a family, to grow a business. And we’re proud of that.  

So you recently were inducted or you’re going to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, you just found out recently. What was it like to get that knock on the door and be able to celebrate with your family?  

Yeah. It’s incredible. And another one of those things that you don’t start off thinking about when you enter the league, and even towards the end of my career. I mean, I remember going to events, and people would introduce me as future Hall of Famer. And it’s just like, it just doesn’t even register. I’m just still trying to play. I’m still trying to get better. I’m still trying to be a great teammate. I’m still trying to win championships. Your mind doesn’t even go there.  

And even upon retirement, it maybe just feels so far away or just unfathomable. The people you look at with the gold jackets are just the legends, the legends of the game. And all of a sudden, for one of them to knock on your door with the gold jacket on. It happened to be Dan Fouts, who was one of the first guys that I met when I was drafted to the San Diego Chargers, that was really meaningful.  

And my family totally set me up, too. That’s become actually a great tradition with the Hall of Fame. Is they call it The Knocks. It’s always a Hall of Famer who’s coming to tell you that you’ve been inducted into the Hall of Fame and are selected. And it was funny because it was my birthday, and my oldest son and I share a birthday. So that weekend, we had made all about him. I’d rather not count the years for me now.  

[LAUGHTER]  

But my daughter had come up to me and said, hey, dad, I want to take you out to eat for your birthday. And so my heart’s melting. I’m like, absolutely, sweetheart, let’s do it. She had 5 o’clock. So I’m waiting downstairs at 5 o’clock, and my wife’s ready, my daughter’s ready, and the boys are messing around. So I’m like, boys, let’s go. Rylan said 5 o’clock, let’s go to eat. And they’re still messing around.  

Well, little did I know, Britt had told him, hey, stall, stall, because I think the camera crew and the whole setup was running a little bit late. And I’m like, boys, 5 o’clock. Time to go. You’re being disrespectful. And so then I’m getting fired up. And then all of a sudden, there’s a knock at the door. And I’m like, who’s at the door? We’re trying to leave. And then there’s Dan Fouts. And it’s like, oh, you guys got me.  

Oh, that is so special. And now you’re going to be a legend with the gold jacket.  

Yeah, I get the gold jacket. Tried it on. It fits pretty nice.  

[LAUGHTER]  

And it’s Purdue colors.  

I love that too. So when we talk about entrepreneurship and philanthropy, you gave a shout out to Jimmy John’s earlier. How have all of these experiences at Purdue– you had your industrial management degree. You were a member of Sigma Chi fraternity. How did those experiences prepare you for life after football as a business owner and entrepreneur?  

Yeah, in so many ways. I’ve always had that bug, that entrepreneurial bug, always loved business. When it came to Purdue, obviously, Purdue, known so much for engineering and management and among so many other things. I knew I wanted to be in the School of Management, but I wanted to incorporate engineering in some way. And so that’s how the industrial management degree came about. I actually started off with an industrial engineering minor. And I did it for two years, and I was taking all those engineering classes. I was like, you know what, I don’t think I’m an engineer.  

[LAUGHTER]  

But I’m definitely a business guy. And so I switched to manufacturing and then just started taking a bunch of history and political science classes as well, was just fascinated with that. But really, really proud of the management degree. And look, as much as it was maybe a pipe dream to play in the NFL or to play professional sports, I really came here with the idea that I’m going to leave after four years. I’m going to contribute as best I can on the football field. But I’m getting my degree, and I’m going into the business world and do something great.  

Just happened to play football for a really long time, and so maybe it just delayed the business part of it. But nonetheless, I was still thinking about it throughout my career, because football’s going to end at some point. You want to have a solid foundation, solid base for maybe what you can build, that you could transition to. And so Jimmy John’s became one of our first forays into business back in 2011.  

I’ll never forget. I’m literally sitting in the State Street Jimmy John’s, which it’s a new location now. It used to be down the way a little bit. But I’m sitting in that location in 2011– and first off, when I got drafted to the San Diego Chargers, I go to San Diego, and there’s no Jimmy John’s. I mean, I was eating Jimmy John’s three days a week when I was here at Purdue. You order it to the dorm at Wylie Hall at 3:00 AM, and some dude comes rolling up on a bike and hands you number 9. And you’re like, this is the greatest thing ever.  

But you go to San Diego, no Jimmy John’s. Go to New Orleans, no Jimmy John’s. So the only time I get Jimmy John’s is coming back to the Midwest, come back to Purdue. And if I was here and I ate nine meals, I was eating Jimmy John’s for seven of them. So taking a bite of that number 9 saying, all right, that’s it. I can no longer go back home to where I’m living and not have Jimmy John’s.  

So I call up a former teammate, Carl Buergler, who was a walk on quarterback who was now the VP of operations for Jimmy John’s corporate in Champaign, Illinois. I’m like, Carl, what do I need to do to bring Jimmy John’s in New Orleans? He said, we just opened up the territory. Are you serious? I said, yes. So there we go. That was–  

[LAUGHTER]  

–basically me signing on as a Jimmy John’s franchisee. And it was actually a great first business experience, because you think about what franchising is at its core, and it’s, we’re taking a proven business model, we’re taking a game plan, so to speak, and we’re putting it in the hands of a young, hungry entrepreneur who wants to be their own business owner and be in control of their financial future. And you operate the game plan, and you’ll see success. You work hard, you’ll see success. And we’ll help you and support you every step of the way.  

And I think that’s what’s really helped me really enjoy franchising. And so we built out the market for Jimmy John’s in New Orleans. And then since then, it’s resulted in being on the franchisor side of a lot of other brands. And so, yes, that’s taken up a lot of time. I’ve had the chance to sit on a few bank boards, which has been an incredible experience, very educational.  

I think what I’ve realized is, especially post-football, is surrounding yourself with as many smart people as you can that you can learn from, that you can glean from. I mean, I’m a lifelong learner. I’m so curious. I love to learn about different industries and different businesses and honestly find the similarities between them all. I love to listen to podcasts where entrepreneurs are talking about how they started and all their struggles and the defining moments. And you find so many commonalities and parallels between people’s journeys. And so much of it is persistence and perseverance, and you learn great leadership lessons through that. Certainly, the basis of, I think, my love for business and the opportunities that I would have after football started here at Purdue.  

I love it. You and Brittany are always giving back to Purdue. You founded the Brees Dream Foundation, which supports cancer patients and children and families in need. What inspires you to help people in that way?  

I feel like I was given this platform for a reason. It was to be able to make our mark, leave things better than we found it, and to make it better for the next generation. Look, if we all take that mindset, then we will always see constant improvement. Despite the craziness that seems to be happening in our world at all times, I think if you always take the mindset that you want to be a great member of the community, use the skill set, use the gifts that you’ve been given for good, you’re constantly going to see improvement, and you’re going to be equipping the next generation to do great things.  

I do want to talk to you about your career in broadcasting, because you’re a great talker. But what has it been like to be on TV? You’re so passionate about football. How has it been sharing your football knowledge with the casual audience? Has that been a little bit tough or do you love it?  

No, I love it. I love broadcasting. Look, I think what I realized is, you play 20 years of professional football, I mean, football becomes so ingrained in you. And certainly, what I’ve recognized over the last five years in leaving the game is that I still have such a love and passion for the game. And what is the best way for me to convey that and release that?  

I coach my kids, which is such a joy. I’ll have three boys in high school next year, so I’ll have a senior, sophomore, freshman all playing football. They play multisport, and my daughter’s a gymnast. I tell my daughter I’m like, sweetheart, I will support you whatever I can. I can’t teach you anything about gymnastics. I know nothing about the beam. She is awesome. It’s the greatest joy in my life to watch her compete.  

But I get to coach high school football. I get to coach my boys. I basically look at it as, I get to steal two extra hours a day with them, which is awesome. But also teach their friends. All their friends, I’ve coached since first grade. And so I walk around campus, and I’m not Mr. Brees. I’m Coach Drew. I love that. But the broadcasting, you truly prepare for a game as if you’re playing it, and I think that’s what I love.  

It’s one of the things I miss about playing the game, is just truly the weekly grind of going in on Monday and you’re like, OK, how are we going to attack these guys? And you just sit there, and you make your way through the film. And you begin to start identifying things, and you build your game plan, and then you go out and practice it, and you work through all the mistakes, and you refine. And then you get to game day, and then you just feel so confident and invincible.  

It’s the same preparation for with broadcasting, just sitting there as if I’m going to attack that offense, that defense. I know that coordinator. I know what his tendencies are. I know the skill set of this quarterback. I know where the matchups are. And you begin to build your own game plan. And then you have your production meetings, and you can confirm that as you talk to coaches and the players on each side.  

But then once you get to game day, you’re really reacting to what’s happening in front of you. But you want it to be an easy listen, and you want it to be entertaining. You mentioned the casual fan. Most people who are watching, they’re casual fans. They have their loyalties to their teams, but they just want it to be an easy listen. They want it to be fun. And hopefully you can give them three or four things that they wouldn’t have otherwise known. A fun fact about one of those players that once you dug in, you were able to find that you think is really relevant to what’s happening, or can build a connection between the fan and the player. You see that every week.  

And then I think the most exciting thing for me is the situational football aspect. When you get to two-minute drives or when you get to key third downs or red zone possessions, and you can really just put yourself in the moment, I mean, that’s what continues to fuel the fire. I do. I love the game, and I love to convey that through broadcasting.  

You mentioned your kids. Are they interested in Purdue? Is the senior looking at playing football in college?  

Yeah. My oldest son, Baylen, who is going to be a senior, a big lacrosse player. In fact, today he’s playing in the Division I Lacrosse Championship in–  

Oh my god.  

–southern California, which is awesome. I’m excited for him and his team. And then my middle son, Bowen, is probably more of a football player. And then my younger son, Callan, is more of a basketball player. And my daughter’s a gymnast at this point. So even though they’re all multi-sport, they play football, basketball, lacrosse, gymnastics. Rylan does basketball as well. They have that sport that they’re honing in on a bit. And so certainly, Purdue is in the mix.  

It’s funny though because I think part of the access to information nowadays with kids is, they know so much about so many different players and sports, and there are multiple fantasy leagues, and this and that. And so it’s crazy that there are loyalties are all over the place. And look, I mean, all our kids were born in New Orleans, Louisiana, so they love LSU Tigers. Right?  

OK.  

I mean, that’s in the culture as well. Is if you’re a Saints fan, you’re a Tigers fan, and vice versa.  

That’s a great gymnast program.  

Absolutely, yeah. So we’ll see how it plays out.  

No shortage of athletes in the family.  

Yeah. They love it.  

So what’s next for Drew Brees?  

Oh, all kinds of stuff. I’m 47, coaching the kids, broadcasting, all the business stuff on the franchising side. I love youth sports. I’m a partner at a couple of youth sports organizations that are two of the largest in the country, unrivaled sports and pioneer sports. I think continuing to foster the next generation of athletes and leaders is something that I am really passionate about. This window of time with my kids is so much fun, so much fun, watching them continue to grow and develop and find their path. And then you as a parent just want to support them every step of the way. I love what’s happening here at Purdue. Being a part of all these things makes life a lot of fun.  

What excites you about the future of Purdue?  

Oh, man. Again, every time I come to campus, I see something new. I see something under construction. I see some improvement. I want to spend more time here. I want to spend as much time as I can. It’s tough when you live in Southern California, and you’re doing all this stuff in the fall with broadcasting and coaching. We make it out as much as we can. Yeah. I mean, I love not just the memories here, but I love what’s going to happen in the future.  

OK. We’re going to end with a rapid fire segment. So just the first thing that pops into your head, OK?  

Yeah.  

Last Purdue teammate you texted or called.  

Oh, well, it would have been Ben Smith and Jason Loerzel. We’re on a group text. Those were my college roommates, so we talk all the time.  

A hype song that reminds you of your Purdue football days.  

Oh, that’s good. OK. I’m going to give a shout out to– the irony here is that this was a New Orleans rapper, Master P.  

Oh.  

Master P, we used to play that. So this was like Willie Fells, Lee Johnson. It was a bunch of the Florida guys that had control of the stereo system during stretch at practice.  

OK.  

So we would always listen to Master P. So there’s a shout out. That’s a shout out to Willie Fells and Lee Johnson. Those are the two linebacker leaders of the team back when we were freshmen and sophomores. Love those guys, man. And they’re doing great too. But that’s a song that definitely reminds me of the Purdue days. No limit soldiers.  

Favorite Purdue tradition.  

Favorite Purdue tradition. Oh, wow. I’ve yet to actually be a part of this. What do we do with the basketball team?  

Oh, the sandstorm dance.  

Yeah, the sandstorm dance. I have not been a part of it, but I’ve seen it all over the place.  

You got to learn that.  

I know.  

We got to do a video of that.  

Awesome.  

All right.  

For sure.  

Favorite campus study spot back in the day.  

Yeah, good question. The Hovde Water Fountain is probably where I spent the most time, just because it was kind of close to engineering mall and business school, and so I felt like I was walking through it all the time.  

Did you have a signature go to meal at the dining courts that you liked?  

Well, Cary Quad had the best food at the time. So we would always find ways to get to Cary Quad. Yeah so I remember a lot of meals there. It’s like meeting up with guys on the team or classmates or whatever to get the good stuff.  

Did Coach Tiller have a favorite catch phrase or saying?  

Well, I said one of them– he who has all the gold makes all the rules. Yeah, probably that one. It was more so just the look, that look he would give you with the bushy mustache.  

[LAUGHS]  

You knew if he was upset with you.  

OK. All right. The look. Most memorable Purdue football win as a player.  

Oh.  

You talked about three big ones.  

Yeah.  

[LAUGHS]  

But I’m actually going to go– I’m going to go prior to that when we were sophomores and we played at Michigan State. And Michigan State had just beat Ohio State, who was number one in the country. So this was 1998. And so we go to Michigan State, and they were a really good team. This was like Plaxico Burress and Robert Smith. They had some other guys. I mean, they were really talented team, and they just beat number one Ohio State.  

And so then we play them at their place, and I think we’re down 13 points. And we go down, and we score two consecutive touchdown drives. Blocked punt on one of them. I just remember that last touchdown, and it was like the first real big comeback I felt like I’d been a part of in college. And so it was like a defining moment of how good we could be as a team. And I think for me personally, that was a big moment.  

Later on that year, we go down to the Alamo Bowl, and we beat K-state. And similar deal where we were actually in control of that whole game, and they come roaring back. They were fourth in the country. And honestly, they should have been playing for a national championship. They were really, really good. And then we go on a two-minute drive. Ike Jones catches the little inside fade. I think just some of those comebacks just was like preparing us, making us recognize what was possible for us as a team.  

And so I go back to those years saying that that’s really what positioned us and built the foundation for what we were able to accomplish later.  

What about a memorable Boilermaker athletics game, any sport that you’ve attended as a spectator?  

Yeah. Watching our women’s basketball team win a national championship.  

Yes.  

I guess it was ’98, ’99–  

Yes.  

–season. That was awesome.  

We’ve had some of them on the podcast. Stephanie White.  

Was that Ukari Figgs, Stephanie White-McCarty. That group of girls was awesome.  

Oh, they talked about that you were there, I think–  

I was there all the time. I love watching them play.  

And you greeted them when they came home. I think you were part of the group in the–  

Yeah.  

That’s so cool.  

That was awesome.  

First thing you bought after signing your NFL contract. That was probably a house.  

[LAUGHS]  

Yeah. Nothing crazy. There wasn’t anything crazy. I’d say this. My wife and I love to travel, and we tried to do a lot of that prior to kids. So prior to having our first son, Baylon, in 2009, I think South Africa was a bucket list trip, going on a Safari and driving the Garden Route and diving with great white sharks and basically doing all the crazy stuff before you– skydiving–  

Oh my gosh.  

–bungee jumping, doing all the crazy stuff before you have kids and responsibilities.  

I love it. Awesome. OK, last one. Craziest place someone said “Boiler Up” to you.  

Oh, there you go. Well, I definitely have this with the Who Dats, the Who Dat Nation, all the New Orleans fans. Here’s one. So have you ever heard of the tulip fields in outside of Amsterdam?  

Yeah.  

So there’s the tulips, I think, bloom there for a month out of the year. I think it’s literally this time. It’s like April, May. And so my wife and I went there for that because we were actually going to a wedding of a Purdue teammate’s sister in Paris. And so we started in Amsterdam, and then we took the train to Paris. But we go to the tulip fields. I remember walking through them and somebody yelling, Boiler Up!  

Oh my gosh.  

And you just never know where you’re going–  

You never know where you’re going to meet the Boilermakers. They’re everywhere. Yeah.  

Incredible. Well, Drew, we can’t thank you enough. It was a pleasure talking to you, and congrats on all your successes and your new doctorate.  

Yeah, thank you. I told my family I have to call me doctor here for at least six months.  

Dr. Brees, absolutely.  

That’s right.  

Thank you so much.  

Thank you.  

Congratulations to Dr. Drew Brees, and thanks so much for joining us on This is Purdue. If you’d like to watch our full video interview in our Podcast Studio, plus some extra bonus videos featuring Drew, head over to our podcast YouTube page, youtube.com/@thisispurdue. And click that Subscribe button while you’re over there. This is Purdue is brought to you by Purdue Brand Studio.  

The podcast is hosted and produced by me, Kate Young. The creative team behind the shows videography, design, and writing and research includes Thad Boone, John Garcia, Cheryl Glotzbach, Ashvini Mulshe, John Underwood, and Dalani Young. Social media marketing is led by Maria Welch, and our project manager is Rain Gu. Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at Purdue.edu/podcast. And head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe today so you never miss an episode. You can also check out all of our podcast video content on our YouTube page, youtube.com/@thisispurdue. And as always, Boiler Up!  

This is Lindsay Perrault and you’re listening to This Is Purdue.  

Hi, I’m Kate Young, and you’re listening to This Is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking.  

Who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators? Who are these boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty, and alumni taking small steps towards their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same.  

The thing people don’t realize until they get deep into content creation is that you are your own small business, and you need to have those entrepreneurial skills if you’re going to be successful.  

In this episode of This Is Purdue, we’re talking to Lindsay Perrault. In today’s digital world filled with social media apps like Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, we’re inundated with photos and videos and advertisements. Social media has shifted the way companies advertise. They’re prioritizing influencer partnerships, authentic user-generated content, and highly targeted interactive ads over polished commercials.  

Many people today head over to their favorite social media platform to research a brand or product before they buy it. And a lot of times, these people are watching their favorite content creators or influencers try on or use these products before adding it to their carts.  

Now, if you’re curious about dipping your toes into content creation, or maybe you have a child who’s interested in this potential career path, then this episode is for you. We’re going to dive into the differences between a content creator and an influencer. That’s right. There are distinctions that make those two different.  

We’re also going to discuss the future of content creation, and how to empower students on how they can transform their creative ideas into real-world impact as entrepreneurs. Because as you’ll hear, content creation is like running your own business. There’s strategy involved, writing, photography, even managing your money and taxes.  

Lindsay is a fashion content creator, so she has firsthand knowledge of what the content creator space is like right now. She is also the director of Co-Curricular Engagement and a lecturer for the Brian Lamb School of Communication within Purdue’s College of Liberal Arts. She also teaches a new course on digital content creation and social media influencing at Purdue.  

In this course, students are challenged with setting up an Instagram account and running it as their own personal brand throughout the semester. We’ll dig more into that and how the Union Club Hotel is involved in this episode. So let’s get to it. Here’s my conversation with Lindsay.  

Lindsay, thank you so much for joining us on This Is Purdue, the official university podcast. We are just chatting about our former life and news. So I’m excited to hear about what you’re doing now, though, at this.  

Will be fun.  

Let’s start at the beginning. We’re in this golden age of digital content creation, and according to Forbes and CNBC, over 30% of Gen Alpha, 57% of Gen Z, respectively want to become content creators and influencers. In your opinion, what are your thoughts on why these younger generations want to go into that career path?  

It makes a lot of sense. If you look at the demographics of that generation. There are a group that loves flexibility. They don’t see the value in climbing the corporate ladder the way our generation or the generations prior did. They value creative flexibility, the ability to set their own schedule. And content creation really gives you that. You are your own boss.  

And they’re digital natives, so they grew up in a period where they could see people that looked like them have massive success in the industry. But it is a lot more complicated than it looks from the outside. And that’s where we need some classes that can professionalize what they might be attempting to do.  

How would you define content creation and what exactly they do? Because it isn’t probably what it seems. It’s not all glamorous.  

There’s a lot to it. It is copywriting. It’s photography. It’s videography. But most important, I like to think of it as storytelling. And that’s why I really enjoy content creation because you’re taking the message you want to share. You’re thinking about, who is this message for? Who am I trying to reach? It’s brand building. There are lots of different layers to it, and it looks so different depending on what your goal is.  

We have content creators that are not about making a profit. Maybe they want to represent a cause or a mission. We also have content creators that enjoy the sales aspect, and they want to work with brands. And maybe it’s fashion, maybe it is sports related. It really is the kind of career you can chart your own adventure, and that’s pretty exciting.  

So you were talking about layers. How is entrepreneurship and innovation one of those layers that appeals to those younger generations to?  

The thing people don’t realize until they get deep into content creation is that you are your own small business. And it involves negotiation. It involves contracts. It involves deciding how am I going to file my taxes. And if you are successful at being a creator, once you have your account up and running, you often diversify. And maybe you’re going to experiment with different business ventures to sell a product, to build a course, and you need to have those entrepreneurial skills if you’re going to be successful.  

When it comes to the innovation side of it, content creators by nature are creative people, so you’re going to have that innate skill set, but you need to have fundamentals and tools to be able to really take it to the next level. Because this is an industry that changes every year, I would argue it changes every month, and you need to be prepared for that.  

So Lindsay, you and I were chatting before this and you said people in your son’s classroom are already saying, hey, I want to be a YouTube blogger when I grow up.  

It’s really interesting to watch. He’s eight. So that gives you a perspective of how young they’re starting to contemplate these careers. And they were going around the room, and everyone was talking about what they wanted to do. And one of his buddies said, YouTuber. And it’s not uncommon.  

We’re seeing careers like athlete, professional athlete, actress getting replaced by being a YouTuber and TikToker when it comes to the goals that children have. And it’s fascinating to watch. It’s also in some ways concerning. I think we need to develop some professional skills behind it to support it, but it is interesting.  

What would you say for parents of Gen Z and Gen Alpha students who want to pursue content creation as a dream career? What advice should they keep in mind?  

I think the first mistake would be is if you completely dismiss it because you can be very successful as a content creator. So I think the place to start is to assess what they can do to develop creative skill sets that could benefit them in that career. So things like videography, video editing, photography, storytelling skills, and especially honing a written skill set because that can translate in so many different ways in a content creator career.  

The other layer is developing a business skill set. They have to have business acumen, so help them in that regard. And then as they move forward, remind them that this is a very fluid industry. And so you have to be adaptable. And so if they really want to pursue it and if they have a natural aptitude for it, the next step would be finding some sort of additional training, hopefully at the college level, where they can really develop that business skill set too.  

That’s a great point because a lot of these content creators are witty and funny, and I’m like, how did they think of that caption? Or how are they thinking of these copywriting?  

And it seems natural, but it is very strategic. It’s all about developing hooks, understanding consumer psychology, understanding what is going to make somebody click on something in three seconds. That is a skill set. It’s not all just luck and happenstance. They do have to develop it.  

And also if you want to make this career, how are you going to develop staying power? It’s one thing to grow an account and have it work for a year on your wit, your humor, your personality. But if you want to do this for 10 years or more, there’s a lot more to it.  

How has content creation grown and evolved in the past few years?  

Its exploded. We are seeing a lot more people entering. What is interesting to watch is that we’re seeing a bit of an erosion of what I would call the creator middle class. We have people that are massively successful, but we also have a lot of creators that are struggling.  

So many people, when we were in the pandemic, it looked like a very attractive career. We were all spending our entire day online, and brands didn’t have the ability to create advertising in the way that they would traditionally do.  

So when we were in the pandemic and right after, as we were coming out, we had to find new ways to advertise and creators were earning a lot of money. It was easy at that point. There wasn’t as much competition. And so you had people make the decision who may have had traditional full-time jobs, say, I am going to take the leap and become a full time content creator. It worked for several years. A lot of creators made a wonderful salary.  

Now we’re to the point where things are getting more competitive and brands that only have so many advertising dollars, they have to decide how are we going to get the most return on investment. And so now the demands are higher. The creators that are getting paid brand deals tend to be the larger, more established creators or the creators that are able to create ad worthy content that a brand can use as an ad that they boost behind the scenes.  

Something that is really interesting to me is when I’m watching something and I don’t know it’s an ad until the very end. That is art.  

That means the creator did their job and that is what we’re trying to do. And right now, it’s very important for brands to do that because we have such mistrust in traditional advertising. You can’t reach people with a TV commercial the way you once did. And so social ads are where brands are seeing the most return on investment, generally.  

So let’s talk about the difference between a content creator and an influencer because it’s very interesting– there is a difference and you and I talked about it before, but I want to help our listeners and our viewers further understand it.  

The creator economy is very broad, and I would divide creators up into three different buckets. Your influencers tend to be people that have a magnetic personality. They have that it quality that makes people want to follow them. And generally, it’s because there’s some aspect of their life that holds influence.  

So it might be they have a particular skill set, or they’re an educator and a really knowledgeable, established person within their field, or they have this aspirational life that we can look at and say, I want to be her or I want to be him. Their audience is incredibly loyal. They will generally buy what you promote. They want to know what’s going on in your life. And so you have to be a very interesting, dynamic person to be an influencer.  

Content creators often have similar skill sets to influencers, but they approach the field as an art form. And so they’re very focused on developing photography skills and videography. So I’d put myself in the content creator bucket because I love video editing more than anything. If I can have a day to play around with my camera and create some magic with video, that’s what I want to do. So content creators do still work with brands, but their focus is less on building a sizable audience and creating content that can be used in multiple different ways.  

And then the third type of creator is what we call UGC creators. So these are creators they don’t need an audience at all to succeed and make an income. They have the content creation skills. They may not have any audience at all, but they can create ad worthy content that brands use. But it also still feels like it’s something the average person could create. It can’t be too polished because then we don’t trust it. So it has to feel like something that you shot on your cell phone so that we perceive that as a real, legitimate review.  

So how are they making money if they don’t have that large of an audience, though?  

The brands are paying them to create content. So for example, I’ve done some UGC work and I worked through an agency that focused mostly on creating TikTok videos. I don’t ever post anything on TikTok. And so this was a particular campaign where I went into Jared’s. It was for different jewelry. You go in and there’s five different concepts that you want to shoot. They have the hooks mapped out of what is the catchy title for that particular video, and you’re shooting all of that content, and then you send it directly to the brand, and the brand posts it.  

So you are helping the brand create content at a scale that they typically wouldn’t be able to do. Because if you think about a typical business, you need content on social media every day. Not every business has the creative people on their team to do that, and so they need to hire other people to help.  

Would you say that celebrities are influencers in a way?  

Oh, absolutely. And I think that’s why you see so many celebrities doing the kind of content that influencers do, because now they see a little bit of competition from some of these mega influencers that are pulling attention away from your traditional celebrities because they are celebrities in their own right.  

And the celebrities can make more money on top of the money they already made.  

Brand deals. Why not?  

So how are these two roles different when it comes to content output, target audience, and brand sponsorships?  

The big distinction is that if you want to build a career on being an influencer, you have to have consistency. You need to show up for your audience day in and day out. If you think about people like Alix Earle, when she was building her career, she is posting constantly. So you need to be doing that.  

You’re also thinking about who your audience is. When you grow a very large following, your audience starts to get more diverse. And so it’s not necessarily that one target group that you might have initially been reaching for. And so that’s why brands often like to work with smaller creators, because they have a very key idea of who they’re trying to reach. And your micro-influencers and your nano-influencers, that’s the industry term that we use, they are the ones that tend to reach that specific population.  

Consistency is important for influencers, also demonstrating a lot of personality and authenticity. If you try to be this perfectly packaged, polished person all of the time, you’re not going to develop the kind of connection that you need to succeed with your audience.  

From the content creation standpoint, you’re really trying to develop the art form and consistently evolving your skills, because what works today is not going to work a month from now. And so you have to be willing to pivot to try new things.  

When I first got into doing content creation, I thought it would all be about photography, and I focused so much on learning the art of photography. And then reels came along and all of a sudden photos didn’t work anymore. And so you had to develop that short form video skill set.  

And I remember when they were trying to get Instagram back to photos and that never really happened. They’re still trying, carousel posts. So that’s a cycle of a variety of different photos. They are coming back. But it is interesting to see Instagram seemingly flip flopping and changing its mind all the time.  

Is there such thing as posting too much?  

Too much your mental health, I would say. So for algorithms– and it can be detrimental if you post too much, because you want the content that you put out to be quality, especially right now when we have so much information competing for our attention.  

When I look at the way my students consume social media, how fast they’re scrolling, as a creator, it kind of kills me because I know it’s just a split second you have to get somebody to sit with content that you might have been working on for eight hours or even longer. And so you really have to dial into how do I continue to be interesting.  

Not to mention the fast forwarding now of the 2x.  

Yep, it’s so easy to get skipped over.  

So you call yourself a content creator. Why do you make that distinction?  

I like to be very transparent when I’m working with brand partners about what I can provide. And what I’m very confident in is, as a former journalist, I have storytelling skills that I know are going to be valuable to them. I know I have photography skills, videography skills that are at a higher professional level because I was in the industry for 10 years and I continue to develop that art form.  

And so I like to focus on the artistic side of content creation. And I’m very confident that when I work with a partner, I’m going to give them a piece of content that they can use as an ad. It’s going to be quality. What I don’t like to promise is that I’m going to reach a very large audience. I think I’ve developed a group of people that value my insight and opinion, but I’m never going to sell being the most interesting person in the world. I think influencers have influence, I have educational influence, but I wouldn’t classify myself as an influencer.  

And then people like MrBeast or Alix Earle, those are influencers the majority of people are interested in. They want to see their everyday life. They want to see them getting ready for events. They want to see the little details.  

And it takes a certain phase in your life to be able to do that. And that’s the other reason why I chose the content creator approach, because it’s more practical. I’m a mom, I work full time at Purdue. I can’t create content as often as I want, and so I don’t have the opportunity to do many of those things that would be required to be successful as an influencer.  

You have to be on all the time. That is very difficult for a lot of people. So the most I can handle is maybe posting three times a week on Instagram. And the content I put out I want it to be great, but I can’t show up every day to build an audience.  

You’re not getting ready for Dancing with the Stars?  

No. Oh, it would be fun though.  

[LAUGHS] So working with brands as an influencer versus a content creator, how does that differ?  

I would say it’s actually pretty similar between those two groups. The place where it really differs is if you are a UGC creator, because you are often the one person production company for them. But both influencers and content creators, the brand is going to expect you to have a creative, innovative concept.  

They go to creators because you are going to think about how to position that product or service in a way that their marketing team might not have thought of because you are acutely aware of what your audience thinks about things, and so you’re going to have ideas they haven’t even begun to explore.  

So that’s one aspect of when they’re working with content creators and influencers. So they go for the level of creativity. I think both content creators and influencers approach it like an art form. It’s very much a business transaction. You’re coming up with the scripting. There’s rounds of revision, so you generally will be submitting drafts ahead of time, but it is quite similar.  

We talked at the beginning about having business skills, having copywriting skills. Why do you think it’s still really vital for students to obtain a college degree, even if they do want to go into content creation someday?  

It’s the same thing I tell my students in the content creation and social media influencing class. The more you focus on the business aspects and developing skill sets, the more staying power you’re going to have in the industry.  

It’s really difficult to watch when you see a creator who had massive growth and it worked really well– and I’ve watched this cycle happen with many, many people where they’re riding a high because the algorithm is working well, it’s connecting. You’re building your audience, and then something changes and they don’t know how to pull themselves out of that.  

If you have a firm business skill background underpinning your work, as well as that creative skill set, you can pivot in so many different directions. And maybe at some point you decide content creation isn’t for me. You could become a professional photographer, you could sell your video skills, you could be a writer, you could do strategic communication. And so I think you really want to broaden out your skill set so you’re not pinned in one particular direction.  

Nowadays we see LinkedIn content creators. I see a ton of dermatologists on Instagram. Now they’re getting their own skin lines from the success they’re having as content creators, as influencers. So how can working professionals use content creations to further their career?  

I don’t even think it’s a how can, I think it’s a must. You have to. If you’re a business owner these days and you want to reach an audience, it’s not optional anymore. You’re going to have to do some kind of form of content creation, whether it’s hiring somebody or learning to do it yourself.  

And the beauty of content creation now is there’s so many tools that allow anybody to produce it. So we’ve had advances in editing apps. So you can essentially do what I used to do with multiple video cameras and the full Adobe Premiere editing suite. Now, you can do it right from your cell phone.  

And so I have taught workshops in the area with women’s business associations, where we talk about how you can use the tool in your pocket. Cell phones shoot incredible video. And so it’s just a matter of sitting down and thinking about learning the basics.  

And it’s easier than people think. Even my eight-year-old has been able to edit video. And so you’re thinking about what’s my message, what’s the story I’m trying to tell. And now we’re developing the creative skills. So it is new, it is different, but there’s so much potential.  

I even like to use my Instagram to play around to help my skills for the podcast.  

It’s fun. And if you are of a creative mindset– and this is what inspires me so much about the creator economy– is that you get to learn constantly. Every day is different. There’s always an opportunity to drill down a little bit more, to polish that one thing.  

So Purdue Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation is open to all majors. Why is that program a great addition for any student considering a career in content creation after graduation?  

It gives you the next level of professionalism. I think it’s a matter of staying power in the industry. You have that underpinning of business background that you’re going to use if you decide to develop a product to sell a course. All of that is really important. And then from the innovation component, it allows you to approach content creation with an innovative headspace that you’re going to need because it’s a very fluid, ever changing industry.  

Content creation is all about innovation. It’s always different, ever changing. And so I think focusing on entrepreneurship sets you up to be long lasting in the content creation industry, in the space. If you want to build a business off what you are creating, many content creators eventually will sell a course.  

Sometimes it’s about how to become a content creator. We see that all the time. But it might be a product. It might be realizing at some point maybe I was doing content creation for myself for a while, and now I’m going to help real estate agents by creating videos for them. And then how do you market that skill set? You need to have the business background. And so adding that on top of perhaps a communications degree or a video arts degree, there’s lots of different options.  

We talked a little bit about the algorithms changing. I think after the pandemic they changed a ton. And there’s all this competition now. Things like AI, I am sure have changed as well. Given these factors, what do you think the future of content creation looks like?  

I just had a conversation with a student in the advertising class I teach yesterday about what it’s going to look like. It’s not going to go away, but I do see it’s narrowing the content creation space because we’re in a period of influencer fatigue, in many ways.  

Influencers have been around for a while now, and if you think about scrolling through your social media feed– and your feed might be a little bit different than mine, because it’s all customized based on what you do with social media and how you interact with it. But I’m noticing it’s all ads, and so that is pushing quite a lot of people away in getting us to just dismiss it.  

We’re not engaging with content anymore in the way that we used to. We are not inclined to comment on posts. We just passively consume. And so social media isn’t really social anymore. It’s becoming entertainment media. It’s becoming interest-based media. If people aren’t interacting with the content, it makes it harder for content creators to last in the industry.  

So I think we’re going to see a narrower pool of people who pursue this. We are also seeing topical experts. So influencers are now building that influence based on specific skill sets of someone who is coming out of a particular industry, their knowledge-based influencers. And that to me is really exciting because you can learn so much from these people.  

And their content tends to be high caliber, high quality. It’s value-added content. I talk to my students very often about putting value in every single post that you do, so that if somebody reads that piece of content, they watch your video, what do they learn? What did they walk away from? Are they feeling more emotionally connected? Are they feeling uplifted? Is there a bit or a golden nugget of information that is actually truly helpful? Those are the kind of people that are going to stick around.  

Now that you say that, I never really like posts or comment. I send them to my friends.  

That’s good. That is a engagement metric that is very powerful and that is what most people are doing. If you have noticed, if you look really carefully about what the metrics look like is the likes on posts are way, way down. That’s because we’re saving and we’re sharing. We’re not necessarily liking.  

Oh, I do book. I’ll save them and go back to and make a placement–  

If it’s something that’s going to be helpful.  

Yep. Or oh, I need to buy that next time I’m at the drugstore or whatever it might be. What are the risks of serving a platform that you don’t own in terms of content longevity?  

We are seeing this play out right now in a big way. There have been a lot of engagement rate changes on Instagram. Creators that for a long period of time were very successful, it’s gone off the cliff. And that’s very emotionally frustrating for a lot of people. And so you are seeing people exit the industry.  

So what you can do is you want to diversify as much as possible and ideally have something that you own. This is why, even though many people think blogs are a thing of the past, having a website where that is your space, you own it. Also your email list. You always have a way to reach that audience that gave you that very precious access to their email. Not everybody’s going to do that. So the people that go there are your superfans.  

And if I look at my own accounts where I truly make conversions or people buy something based on my recommendation, it does not happen on Instagram. It’s always based on my long form content on my blog, where I talk a lot about petite fashion tips and advice for dressing in that manner.  

Those are readers that are going there for a specific purpose, so they already have a purchase intent, or they have a question, a problem that long form content can solve. So we’re seeing many creators pivot away from short form to longer form content like podcasts, YouTube, and even back to blogging, or Substack. That too.  

Oh, yeah. Substack is hot right now. You talked about you have a full-time job. You’re a wife. You’re a mom. How do you stay fresh and relevant as a content creator?  

I think working with college students really helps.  

Oh, that’s a great point–  

They give me a fresh perspective. And I love teaching the content creation class because they do a project where they select an influencer that they want to talk about and present why this person is successful. And so I’m constantly getting new ideas in different places.  

I also love to consume social media for ideas. Generally, I am on social media and I’m working, so I’m posting or it’s something based on my own content. But I do set aside maybe five minutes or so where I scroll for inspiration, and I have many folders where I save things that are artistically inspiring, or I love how a creator did that.  

So I think it’s just having an open mind being willing to learn new things. And that wasn’t a stretch for me, because that’s why I went into journalism in the first place, because I like change. I don’t want every workday to look the same. And that works really well for content creation, because you never know where a project is going to take you.  

Let’s get into your class. It’s such a cool concept. It’s fairly new, so tell us all about it.  

What I noticed is we had an absence of classes that were designed for students who wanted to build their own personal brand based on their interest. We had other social media classes where they were building social content for someone else, but this allows them to pick a topic that they’re interested in and then build the social media skills around it.  

In content creation and social media influencing, they come into the class and we go through the whole process of starting your own influencer account. So they pick a topic. They go through a lot of personal branding exercises, they hear from experts in the field. And then we start to develop the photography and video skill set that they need, as well as learning about what is value-added content.  

So if you’re going to put something out there, can we make sure that it doesn’t feel so me centric and it is actually of utility for the audience? And then their final project, they get to go through what it’s like to do an influencer campaign where you work with a particular client.  

And who is that client?  

So the Union Club Hotel is our partner for that project, and it has been a beautiful partnership, because if you’ve been there, you know the space is aesthetically pleasing, but it also works really well because they have different outlets that will appeal to different students.  

So I have some students who are building accounts around food in the community, and so they are very interested in going to 811 or boiler up bar or covering leaps coffee, and they can focus on that. And then you have other creators that might be doing something in the fashion and beauty realm. They tend to look at the hotel as a backdrop for being a really stunning aesthetic location, and maybe they’re matching outfits to the rooms of the Union Club Hotel.  

But what’s important about that project is someone from the Union Club Hotel comes into the class, and they give them a content direction brief of this is our brand, this is what we’re looking for. Here are our marketing challenges. Here are what not to do and what we would like you to create.  

And so they can start to go through the process of what it really looks like when you’re doing a client campaign, that it’s not all about what you want. You have to project the message that the client needs to deliver, while also formatting it for your audience at the same time. And it’s interesting to watch what they do. And the student who is the most successful gets to come back, and the Union Club Hotel will hire them as an influencer to do a little local staycation.  

Oh, incredible. And I bet it gets competitive.  

It does. We found once we added that, it sweetened the pot and they turn out some really impressive work.  

You’ve talked a little bit about your lifestyle blog. It’s called “Anchored in Elegance.” And like you said, it specifically caters to petite fashion. I follow you, I love it all. I’m not quite as petite, but I am a short woman and I love all your style. And then that’s also the name of your Instagram, so if anyone wants to follow you there. But what sparked your interest in all of that?  

It goes way back to when I still worked in TV. I wasn’t aware of the content creation space originally, but part of my role as the anchor of a morning show was to promote our show content. And I noticed that even though I was often sharing hard hitting news stories, what’s happening in the world, what people were most engaged with was what I was wearing for the day. Or if I shared something like how I decorated my Christmas tree or a picture of my cat. It was always more of the human connection pieces, and I did find that really fun.  

And the other thing that nudged me in that direction is we had a woman who was a blogger and she wanted to appear on our show, and so we did some segments with her. And I’d never thought of blogging as a career. And then I started to explore it because I found what she was doing very interesting.  

And then when we moved here, I needed a creative outlet and a way to tell stories again. And so I launched my blog when I was pregnant with my son. The first thing when I told my husband I was going to do this, he laughed at me. He’s like don’t have any technical skills. How are you going to do that? And you can figure it out. There’s YouTube university. You can learn anything.  

And so initially I intended the blog– it was called “Anchored in Elegance” because, yes, I was going to talk about fashion, but I also assumed I was going to be going back into the news industry, and it would be a behind the scenes view of news. Well, that never happened. And so it needed to pivot.  

And I found the questions I got most frequently in the audience I seem to be connecting with was women who were very short, who found it difficult to find clothing that fit just right. And what are some tricks to make yourself look taller or find ways to shop more effectively. And so the audience I tend to cater to is people that are like 5 foot and under, because it is very specific.  

How does that help you connect with your students and strengthen the course that you’re teaching and influencing?  

It makes it very natural, and they do tell me that they appreciate it. It would be very difficult to teach this course if you didn’t have your feet still in the industry, because it changes so fast. And I have had to revamp things that I teach almost every single semester because something is going to change.  

It also allows me to give them very real examples of what client requests look like. What does it look like when you’re going through a campaign? What are some red flags to watch out for? Where are the scams you need to be aware of? And people very much do target influencers.  

You also will have brands that reach out, seeming to be brands that are not legit at all, and they’re hoping to use influencers to basically set up a scam website. So there’s things like that I can point out, because I have specific examples in my inbox that I can show them.  

Is it a matter of if it looks too good to be true it probably is?  

It’s that. It is websites that just launched in 2026, and then you go to their social media and no one is engaging with them. And it’s also people saying, I bought something from this company and I never received my item. So when a brand reaches out to me, unless I have already shopped there, I’m very, very careful.  

I want to circle back to the mental health aspect, because being online 24/7, and if that’s your main career, that can deeply impact your mental health, I imagine. So what tips do you have and what tips do you give your students for rest and resiliency?  

It’s important to have the conversation. So we do have a whole class period where we talk about different ethical considerations that you’re going to encounter and also the mental health aspect. One thing most successful creators who have lasted in the business do is very specifically set aside this is a day I’m not going to be online. So even if you post most of the week to have a day where you completely disconnect and you are not going to look at your phone for anything. I think that’s really important.  

It’s also helps protect if you don’t post in real time. For travel creators, especially if you are constantly traveling and on the go, or you’re creating content when you’re on vacation with your family, most creators are going to weave that into what you’re talking about.  

But if I’m taking time away from being with my family to post an Instagram story in real time, that’s going to be detrimental to them. It’s also going to damage your mental health because you’re never fully present. So I never post in real time. Things come back later and I’ll edit when I get back home. So that’s one thing.  

The other thing that’s crucial is to make sure that you’re not tying your self-worth to engagement rates. And it’s very easy to do. It’s very easy to spend a lot of time comparing yourself to others. You can look at other creators and say they’re doing something similar to what I’m doing. Why are they successful and I’m not?  

So I think putting your value based on, well, what am I creating, and am I proud of what I’m putting out there? Am I helping somebody with my content? And so I look at it as an art form. So I think chasing content creation and not influencing in a way reduces the pressure because I don’t need to be all things to everybody. But if I can reach one person and be helpful to them, and if I can create content I’m proud of for my business partner and they say, well, that photo is beautiful, or that video really worked for us, that’s enough for me.  

You also received your master’s degree from Purdue. How did that background shape your career now as a student lecturer and leading your courses here at Purdue?  

So strategic communication here allowed me to pull various pieces of my life and experience together in a new way. So my background is journalism, spent 10 years in the industry. I was also doing content creation, so I had that. But the strategic communication aspect allowed me to think about some of the communication theories and the way people behave in a new way that allowed me to link all of these various pieces together. And to think about things very strategically, what you need to do as a content creator. So it was incredibly useful.  

What advice do you have for current or future as Gen Alphas coming up and into Purdue, what advice do you have for students who want to become influencers or content creators?  

Don’t wait. If you want to do this, just do it. Start creating. Find a topic that you’re passionate about. What I tell my students is, think about what is the one thing that you can talk about nonstop to anybody and everybody, and you will never get sick of talking about that? That’s what you want. Because if you start and you pick something and you only half love it, you’re going to get tired of this really fast. But dive in. It’s going to be messy at first. If I scroll back to the early days of my content creation account, I cringe. It’s terrible, but you have that learning curve.  

And so there’s no reason to wait. You just have to dive in, get creative, build the skill as you go, and then constantly learn, experiment. Content creators that are in the industry, even the most successful among them, are always trying new things. And not everything is going to work, but sometimes you’re going to find that magic piece of the puzzle that really does hit.  

It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us. Is there anything I missed, anything else you want to share with our listeners or viewers?  

You covered most of it. I think content creation is a space that’s really exciting and invigorating. It’s an opportunity to be creative. So I think if people are listening to this who are from the business side, and maybe you’ve seen content creation and you wanted to try it, give it a whirl. You know message. You know what you’re trying to convey to an audience. It’s just a matter of repackaging it. And it’s very fun once you get it. It’ll hook you.  

Don’t you think, too, it could even be a fun hobby?  

Well, that’s what it is for me. I look at my content creation as a hobby, and probably the best part about it is it has allowed me to enjoy my community and the people I interact with in a new way. Because when you start creating content, you’re going to see beauty in the community and backdrops and buildings and places where you might shoot content in a way that you probably wouldn’t have noticed before. Especially on travel, I think it’s a way to document your life and your experiences that you can go back on. So my Instagram is almost like a photo album of important memories.  

Yeah, oh, that’s amazing. Thank you so much, Lindsay. I could probably talk about this all day.  

It’s been fun. Thank you, Kate.  

Thank you. We can’t thank Lindsay enough for joining us. Remember, you can check out her blog and Instagram account in our podcast show notes. OK, that’s a wrap on our spring season, but stay tuned for more exciting episodes this August as we launch our fall 2026 season. We’ll be featuring additional relevant topics that everyone is talking about.  

And don’t forget, we’ll have bonus content releasing on our YouTube channel all summer as well, so be sure to subscribe over there. And be sure to follow This Is Purdue on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you get your podcasts so you don’t miss our kickoff to the fall season. We’ll talk to you in August.  

This Is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young. Our podcast videographer for this episode was led by Thad Boone in collaboration with Jon Garcia, Alli Chaney, Ryan Delaney, and Jonathan Hord. Our social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. Our podcast design is led by Cheryl Glotzbach.  

Our podcast photography for this episode was led by Kelsey Lefever. Our podcast team project manager is Rain Gu. Our podcast YouTube promotions is managed by Megan Hoskins. Additional writing and research assistance is led by Ashvini Malshe, and our creative production manager is Dalani Young.  

Thanks for listening to This Is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcast. From there, you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. And don’t forget, you can also check out all of our podcast content on our podcast YouTube page youtube.com/@ThisIsPurdue And as always, boiler up.  

This is Nick Sturgeon, and you’re listening to This is Purdue.  

Hi. I’m Kate Young. And you’re listening to This is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking. Who are the next game-changers, difference-makers, ceiling-breakers, innovators? Who are these Boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty, and alumni taking small steps towards their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same.  

Our community there just absolutely supports the track. Our identity as well as IMS is woven together. We love Indy. It’s our capital city, but we take pride in being Speedway, Indiana.  

In this episode of This is Purdue, we’re talking to Nick Sturgeon. Nick is a proud Purdue alum and served as the 2025 president of the Speedway Town Council, where he led initiatives to drive economic growth and tourism, including recruiting motorsports manufacturing giants like Dallara’s US headquarters. He’s now a town council member and continues to lead the preparations to host the greatest spectacle in racing each year.  

Nick is sharing his expert insights into what it takes to present the world’s largest single-day sporting event each May before that green flag drops, Purdue’s historic role in the race, plus Speedway’s upcoming centennial celebration, which also coincides with America’s 250th this year.  

With the 110th Indy 500 just around the corner on May 24, we’re excited to talk all things racing with Nick. Plus, we’re diving into how the town of Speedway is continuing to revitalize its local economy and tourism in this episode. So stay tuned for a list of hotspots, coffee shops, restaurants, bars, even go-kart entertainment, right on Speedway’s Main Street that you’ll definitely want to check out.  

And one last surprise for our listeners. I’m joined by another co-host this episode, Purdue University Deputy Spokesperson Trevor Peters. If you’ve ever been to a Boilermaker football game, you’ve probably seen Trevor front and center emceeing those games.  

And of course, it wouldn’t be our annual Indy 500-themed episode if we didn’t ask Nick his predictions on who he thinks will take home the Borg-Warner trophy this year, and Trevor weighs in with his winner as well. So drivers, start your engines. Here’s our conversation with Nick.  

[ENGINE REVVING]  

Nick, thank you so much for joining us on This is Purdue, our official university podcast. You’re a proud Purdue alum. You’re going back again for your doctorate. And you’re a Speedway, Indiana resident. You’ve been living there for almost 20 years now. So we’re going to dig into the Indy 500 and how Boilermakers help shape that and how they’re involved in that.  

And I’m also joined by a very special person today, my Purdue colleague, Trevor Peters. Second time having a co-host this season. I’m so excited.  

Yeah, as they say, what, long-time listener, first time on the podcast. So thrilled to be here. And this will be my last year with my 20th Indy 500 in the Northeast Vista in turn 3. So very pleased to join you and to chat with Nick a little bit.  

A fitting episode for you to join us for. So, Nick, it’s no secret that Speedway Indiana, which is home to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, is the racing capital of the world. But as a longtime resident of this town, how does the famous Indy 500 come to life every May?  

I’ve been in Speedway for about 20 years– actually, officially 19, but 20 next year. It’s always been, throughout the year, activity going. I live there– so kids, sports, all that. But really, as we’re in April 1, things start gearing up, and the energy just starts building and building and building. And it’s really something that it’s hard to explain unless you’ve been there to experience it.  

But the energy is just palpable. You can feel it. There’s nothing else like it in the world, and it feeds into that greatest spectacle in racing. It all comes together, and it’s just great. Again, really hard to explain and put in words and just like, you’ve got to go. You’ve got to be there to experience it.  

How does the town prepare for the race?  

Yeah, really, preparation starts right after the race. We look at what went well, what didn’t go well, figure out how we need to make those adjustments. We’ve been doing it so long. We’re coming into the town’s 100th centennial anniversary this year. So we’ve got a lot of experience with these races.  

So a little bit of it is old hat. We know what to expect, and we just do it, and we do it well. It’s getting the infrastructure ready. It’s making sure we have manpower and resources. It’s collaborating with the City of Indianapolis, the State of Indiana, federal partners to make sure everything’s in lockstep and that when it comes to the 500, we’re ready even prior to the green flag dropping.  

So many Boilermakers have been part of the spectacle over the years, yourself included. But from the All-American Marching Band to the engineers and the garages, how have you seen Boilermakers transform the Indy 500?  

Purdue’s a staple of the race. My daughters were in the Speedway Marching Band, and so they were there behind the Purdue Marching Band, leading the Borg-Warner trophy up to the start-finish line. I mean, that is a major staple and part of the Indianapolis 500 and the racing tradition. So that’s a huge piece.  

I love seeing the Purdue logo just being predominantly displayed through the broadcast and just all the Purdue alums that live in town, that work for IMS, that support the race. It’s an awesome thing to know that it’s happening and that Purdue’s such a predominant part of the Indianapolis 500.  

You talked about the town celebrating 100 years this year. What are some things that racegoers can do outside of just going to the Indy 500?  

May is our time to shine. We’ve got so much. Our downtown Main Street area is thriving. We did a huge redevelopment in about 2010 and just really to help support and give race fans and visitors something else to do besides just go to the racetrack. From the town council perspective, we want people to stay and visit and spend their money in Speedway and help our small businesses and other businesses out while they’re there.  

Main Street is kind of our crown jewel outside of IMS, but we also have other businesses along Crawfordsville Road that goes out towards the west side of town in Founders Square. So we’ve got a lot of activities there.  

And I hate to leave out some of the names, but Charlie Brown’s Pancake, if you’ve not been there, it’s a quick-serve dining place. The pancakes are phenomenal. Every racing legend that has come through and raced at IMS has eaten there.  

We’ve got Brozinni’s Pizza, which is traditional New York-style pizza; SIK’s, Speedway Indoor Karting; and all the way up through Barbecue and Bourbon, for those that like barbecue and maybe some adult beverages can stop there; Dawson’s, an early staple to Main Street from a restaurant perspective; to Fundaes to now Speedway City Garage, which is a new coffee shop that– Founders Ground and another, Pax Verum, have actually– they just did their grand opening. So there’s just so much from the north end to the south end of Main Street to do that we hope people will check out when they come in for the race.  

Daredevil and Quaff On. I’ve spent a few dollars on Main Street.  

And honestly, Daredevils Pizza is probably– it’s one of my favorite pizzas in town.  

You mentioned Main Street, but what are some of the other factors of Speedway that make it an ideal place to host an event like the Indianapolis 500?  

Speedway grew up alongside the track. We came a little bit later than the track’s founding in 1909. We were founded in 1926, but our community there just absolutely supports the track. Our identity as well as IMS is woven together. Our schools are some of the top in the state and the county, and we’re consistently ranked number one in public high schools within Marion County.  

Our parks department, our street, our police and fire, all of that give us our identity separate from the City of Indianapolis, which is great. We love Indy. It’s our capital city. But we take pride in being Speedway, Indiana.  

What are some of the ways that the race impacts tourism and just the overall economy?  

There was a study done not too long ago that the Indianapolis 500, IMS generates close to a billion or over a billion dollars to the state of Indiana from an economic development. We get 350-plus thousand people that come and visit Speedway, Indiana, go watch the race, for the single-largest-day sporting event in the country. That is huge for not only the town but the city and the state and the country. So it’s just huge part from what we, as the state, have been doing for a long time to drive the economy and get people to move and live and stay in Indiana.  

We focus a lot on one month of the year, clearly. I mean, you start with running down Main Street for the mini-marathon all the way to the victory banquet, and there’s a lot going on in that month. The 11 other months of the year, still, clearly, things happening. What else can folks expect from June until April in Speedway?  

Our parks department does a lot of stuff. We do a farmers market in one of our– we’ve got two public parks, one on the north side, Meadowood, then Leonard Park. Meadowood on the north side, there’s a concert series. There’s a farmers market. There’s a music and arts fest that go– sports, youth camps that happen during the summertime.  

Other events– the Run 317 race that happens, which has been voted the best of their series that they do around Indianapolis, which now the course goes through IMS on Georgetown, which is great experience. It’s another aspect of racing that happens.  

Our shops and events– last year, our communication director put on Movies on Main. We opened up what we called a little pocket park where– got an inflatable movie screen, and they were playing movies. From the town perspective, but also for the businesses, we want people to come obviously for May, but for the rest of the 11 months of the year.  

What does the connection to Purdue’s motorsports engineering program, the only accredited undergrad motorsports engineering program in the country, mean to you as a Boilermaker alum?  

I was there for the ribbon-cutting. And when I was asked if I wanted to be, it was like, yes. I mean, I couldn’t respond fast enough. I love– again, I love seeing the Purdue logo on Main Street on the Dallara building and have that there. I just love it.  

I mean, it’s just great to see and that we’re able to bring some of that Boilermaker pride to Speedway, Indiana.  

Yeah. What future opportunities do you think there could be between Purdue and Speedway and Dallara and all that?  

There’s some things I don’t think I can share at this point, not knowing how all the things– but I know that there are efforts to expand the Purdue motorsports program in Speedway to further strengthen that partnership and collaboration between Purdue and Dallara, which Dallara’s been a main staple to Speedway as far as one of the first big businesses to have their headquarters on our Main Street.  

We featured a Purdue alum, and he was a Dallara engineer last year on This is Purdue. And he was just so excited to be working at Dallara, so excited for his experience within the motorsports program. So that was really special for us.  

Well, the town council has also played a big role in bringing and maintaining a lot of automotive companies in Speedway– Allison Transmission, OMR North America. Walk us through how much of a benefit that is for Purdue students and for future motorsports engineering folks that can have those kind of companies based in their backyard.  

As you mentioned, being the only accredited undergraduate program in the country with the track in IndyCar being right there and Dallara and OMR– Junco Racing has their headquarters there. Foyt Racing has their headquarters there– those students I’m kind of envious of because they have an opportunity that no other student has to be in such proximity, again, to those companies. Allison, I forgot to mention, it’s right there.  

I mean, they’re within walking distance of those companies. I don’t think there’s, in any other program in any other school, will have the students to have the same opportunity as those to be in such proximity and be able to say, hey, we’re in such a unique location.  

So changing gears to your background– pun intended there. Do you see what I did there? You received your master’s degree in cyber forensics in 2015 from Purdue, and now you’re pursuing your PhD as well– super exciting. And how did this background in cybersecurity kind of shape your role within the Speedway Town Council?  

I spent 10 years with the State of Indiana, eight as an Indiana State trooper, which really first got me my exposure to Purdue and the cyber forensics program. Going through the master’s program, getting that highly technical knowledge and expertise opened up my opportunity to then work for the State of Indiana, the Office of Technology, and running a cybersecurity program, which was also located here on campus.  

So I was able to work and hire Purdue students in our security operations center. And then from there, it’s just been able to get me into leadership opportunities in the private sector that I knew I could leverage when it came to running for town council and to lead the– or help lead the town of Speedway.  

What sparked your interest in getting into public service?  

Going actually back to when I was a kid, my uncle was a chief of police of a small town in North Central Kentucky. So that really first got me wanting and influenced me wanting to be in law enforcement. From there I was like, oh, yeah, FBI would be cool.  

But as life happened, opportunity to apply for the 67th recruit class for the Indiana State Police happened. I was selected out of over 6,000 applicants. As my life changed and family and other priorities shifted, I left the department, went to again the Office of Technology opportunities in the private sector– happened in 2017. And over from there until when I ran in 2023, I needed to get back into the public service.  

And I was asked to run. Some folks in town felt like there needed to be some new blood on the town council. And seeing an opportunity to step up and lead, my state police instincts kicked in and said, you’ve got to step up when there’s an opportunity for leadership.  

So then, as a former state trooper, did you ever participate in any Indy 500s in the past?  

Actually, every year on the department, except for when I was in the academy, I participated in some shape or form. My first year in 2008, I worked an intersection at Crawfordsville and Lyndhurst, which is a busy intersection, both north and south, east and west traffic.  

But then when I got promoted in 2009 into our IT section, I got detailed to the inside of the track. I got spoiled, let me tell you. Being on the start-finish line for the opening ceremonies, being kind of in the mix, it kind of spoiled me a little bit. But now it’s nice. I get to sit in the Southwest Vista with my wife and my father-in-law, and my daughter occasionally when she wants to come in, and we get to watch the race in turn 1.  

Nice. I’m always so appreciative of law enforcement on race day because you got a lot to deal with.  

It’s a long day. I know for the state police, they get there around 5 o’clock in the morning, and they do not leave until traffic clears out. So it’s a long 14 to 18 hour day, depending.  

What advice do you have for current or future Boilermakers who are interested in getting involved in the town of Speedway or maybe getting involved with the race someday?  

First of all, come. Experience it. I mean, like I said at the start of the show, it’s really hard to describe. But once you go, it’s like, man. I get goosebumps just thinking about the start of the race and everything that goes along with it.  

We’ve got volunteer opportunities with the town, with our parks boards. We’ve got service organizations that help out around the month of May. And then outside of the month of May, IMS, they need people to work the track. There’s opportunities to work for the track during the month– also, the 500 Princess that the 500 Festival does. And I know Boilermakers have participated in being princesses– and the mini-marathon, to volunteer for that. So there’s just a lot of opportunities both with the town government itself, service organizations, or other businesses to be in the mix of the Indy 500.  

So this is a big year– 110th running, America 250, celebrating 250th birthday of our country, and of course on Memorial Day weekend every year. How is the town of Speedway going to blend all of these together and make a great weekend?  

We’re in our centennial anniversary as well. It’s all kind of blend in, which makes it a once in a lifetime opportunity. We, as the town, are blending those celebrations into everything that we’re doing. We’ve got a centennial planning committee that’s been working for probably three years now on planning different activities within the month of May.  

And then as we get into the summer months, it’s just special. I know the State of the Town Address, Doug Boles was mentioning that they’re already close to selling out, and they probably have already sold out by now.  

So we’re going to have huge crowds again and all of the activities that are traditionally accompanying the 500, as well as Rocking on Main– I can’t forget to mention that. My communications director will get mad at me– on Carb Day. It’s a nice continuation of Carb Day to get everybody together. Our businesses can highlight their unique things that they do. It’s just going to be a bigger celebration with all of the 250 and the 100. It’s going to be special this year.  

OK, Nick, This is Purdue annual tradition, five years running, we ask our month of May guests about their race day predictions. So as a local Indy 500 expert, who do you think will come out on top this year? Who do you think the winner will be?  

This is tough. I’ve been thinking about this one for a little bit. Helio’s going to be back in the field, hopefully qualify. So there’s the chance for five. Could you imagine based on the 110, the 250, that Helio gets his fifth win? I’ve been an Helio fan for a long time, so I’d love for him to get his win.  

I also like Pato O’Ward. He’s come close a couple times. Last year’s race, he was really close and just wasn’t able to get it. And Alex Palou pulled off the win. And then there’s Conor Daly– I mean, an Indianapolis native, want to root for him. It’s tough. I would love to see Helio get his fifth. I think if the stars are aligned with everything else, I would love to see him to get his fifth win.  

I think you named the top three fan favorites.  

Yeah.  

That’s who I’m hoping too.  

Trevor, as a guest of the pod, we’re turning the question to you.  

Pato O’Ward.  

OK.  

I have watched him race now for several years, and poor guy’s come up close several times. And I think, he keeps saying, one of these he’s gonna do it. I think it could be this year. We’ll see.  

Those are our predictions. All right, you heard it.  

Do you get a prediction? Do you get one?  

I don’t know enough.  

You refrain?  

I hope it’s any of the people that you all named.  

Fair enough. Well, looking at the future, when you think of Speedway’s impact the next 100 years, what excites you for the Speedway future?  

Our future is bright. With Roger Penske and what he’s done for the track over the last almost six years now– I can’t believe it’s been that long since he’s had stewardship of the Indy 500 and IMS. We are going to continue to build on our racing tradition and innovation with what it means not only to the town of Speedway but to the state. We’re going to continue to build on that racing and automotive history that we have and just continue to make sure that when people come in for the race that they have those extra activities that they can do.  

And from the town perspective, we’re going to continue to invest in our schools and infrastructure, our public safety. We’ve got a lot of activities that we normally do throughout the years. But this year, with it being our centennial, there’s going to be a car show themed throughout the eras of the early 1900s to now.  

We’ll have a unveiling of a time capsule that we’re going to be doing. I think we may be putting in a new time capsule. Come in and see what we’re about. Come visit. It’s busy during the month of May– so maybe if you really want to get the full experience outside the other 11 months. It’s a nice small-town-feel within the bigger city of Indianapolis.  

And now, what, a year since the renovation of the museum, and the roundabout on the north side of Main Street’s getting upgraded too.  

Yeah, we’ll be doing that ribbon-cutting here probably the beginning of the month with Al, Sr. His foundation has donated a lot of money to make that happen. And the metal engravings that will have some prominent features I think is going to be a nice cherry on the top, if you will, on the north side of Main Street– lots of going on, trying to make sure we can have the town there in a hundred years from now, when I’m sure long and gone. [LAUGHS]  

Well, we’re going to wrap up with some rapid-fire questions. Anything that pops into your mind, that’s how we’re going to answer these. OK, if you were a tourist attending the Indy 500, how would you spend your day at Speedway?  

I would start at Charlie Brown’s and then go to Barbecue and Bourbon, get some lunch there. Maybe for those sweet tooths, I would head over to either Parlor Donuts, which just opened up– the maple bacon donuts, great– or go over to Fundaes to get some ice cream.  

And then definitely get there for Carb Day– the party atmosphere, get to see the cars run some practice, the pit stop challenge, the concert, so you get that. And then stay for the weekend. Visit our other restaurants, and then get ready to be there for the green flag.  

Camping the Coke Lot, by chance?  

Yeah.  

Hidden gems of Speedway that we haven’t touched today.  

I think the new one there is the City Garage with Founders Ground. They moved from their location at 14th and Main to the north side. It is a phenomenal piece. Borage is another nice restaurant. Their Cinnamon roll is really good. If you can’t tell–  

I’ve heard of that place.  

It’s at 16th in Lyndhurst. I got a bit of a sweet tooth.  

We can’t tell.  

So their cinnamon rolls are so good. But yeah, those are a couple of hidden gems.  

What about your personal, most memorable Indy 500 finish?  

There for the first eight or nine of them, I was with the state police, so I really didn’t get to see them. I think seeing TK win was probably the most memorable one. Getting his first win was great. I wish he was still racing. I know he’s still involved and helping out with the race team, but seeing Tony Kanaan get his first win was pretty memorable.  

My first 500 when I was a kid was watching Sam Hornish, Jr., take over for and win the race over Marco Andretti and then JR Hildebrand and Dan Wheldon win the race.  

Oh, wow.  

Incredible finishes.  

Wow.  

Can’t top it. For first-time racegoers, what’s your advice?  

Be prepared. Have fun, but be safe. Bring some water, especially if it’s a hotter day. Yeah, just be prepared. There’s 350-plus thousand people that come in. It takes a little bit of time. We see those first-timers just don’t know what to expect. It can be a little bit overwhelming, but just embrace it. Just take it all in, what you can, and get in a little bit early. But don’t expect to leave right after the race is over.  

I don’t know how close you live to the track, but do you park cars in your front yard?  

My yard is not big enough to do that. And I actually live less than a quarter of a mile from gate 1, so it’s an easy walk.  

You’re walking, right?  

I was going to ask you how much money you made on race day because–  

I walked by some of these folks. And like, goodness, they’re packed in there.  

Yeah, and even when we bought our house in 2009, there wasn’t a lot of homes available. So when they did come up, you got what you could. And we’ve been in that house since ’09, and just not a lot of room to park. We’ve got friends from out of town will say, hey, can we park? So we can get one or two that we normally just allow friends to park either in the front or the back. But there are people that pay their mortgages from race day alone.  

Wow.  

Yeah.  

What’s your favorite race day tradition?  

The cannon, just hearing that at 6 o’clock, go off. And then just from there, it’s just the energy. This year for us is going to be a little bit different because my daughters are no longer in band, so I don’t have to get up as early to get them to the high school. But yeah, it’s that, I think, just getting up and hearing the cannon go off. And of course, when I was a trooper, I loved being in there and just seeing all the people come in and enjoying themselves and getting the race going.  

And what’s something that most racegoers don’t do, but they should do?  

Plan accordingly, again, because it takes about three and a half hours, two and a half to three and a half hours, to get out. So just plan to be after the race a little bit longer and continue and have fun. And the neighborhoods are great. There’s kids that are selling lemonade and waters, and so just there’s opportunities to continue that excitement of the race after it goes.  

I love it. Well, Nick, it was a pleasure. Thank you for joining us. Trevor, thank you for joining us as well.  

Yeah, thank you for having me.  

Awesome. Thank you.  

(SINGING) How I long for my Indiana home.  

Drivers, start your engines.  

[CHEERING]  

This year’s 110th running of the Indianapolis 500, presented by Gainbridge, is on Sunday, May 24. We can’t thank Nick enough for joining us. If you want to watch our full video interview with him in our Podcast Studio, check out our YouTube page, youtube.com/@thisispurdue, and click that Subscribe button while you’re there. Plus, be sure to follow This is Purdue on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.  

This is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young. And special thanks to my co-host on this episode, Trevor Peters. Our podcast videographer for this episode was led by Thad Boone in collaboration with Jon Garcia, Alli Chaney, and Ryan Delaney.  

Our social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. Our podcast design is led by Cheryl Glotzbach. Our podcast photography for this episode was led by Becky Rubino. Our podcast team project manager is Rain Gu.  

Our podcast YouTube promotions is managed by Megan Hoskins. Additional writing and research assistance is led by Ashvini Malshe. And our creative production manager is Dalani Young.  

Thanks for listening to This is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcast. From there, you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. And don’t forget, you can also check out all of our podcast content on our podcast YouTube page, youtube.com/@thisispurdue. And as always, boiler up.  

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lauren Bright: 

This is Lauren Bright and you are listening to This Is Purdue. 

Kate Young: 

Hi, I’m Kate Young and you’re listening to This Is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking. 

Who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators? Who are these boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty, and alumni taking small steps towards their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same. 

Lauren Bright: 

I think we’ve started getting that dopamine hit from buying more things, whereas we used to get the dopamine hit taking the thing that we loved and cared about and had a story and had a memory around it and maybe was our grandmother’s and wearing that. 

I think we’re kind of replacing one thing with another form of satisfaction that is really pushed upon us, but you also see the slow fashion trend starting to really rise up in this space as well as kind of the counterbalance to what’s happening in fashion and ultra-fast fashion. So I’m excited to see where that goes over time. 

Kate Young: 

In this episode of This Is Purdue, we’re talking to Lauren Bright. Lauren is a proud Purdue alumna and fashion consultant. She’s worked with elite brands such as Nike, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Columbia Sportswear Company, and Gap Inc. And today, Lauren leads Torus, an innovative textile consulting firm based in Portland, Oregon. She’s dedicated to addressing the urgent conditions caused by fast fashion, including the impact of synthetic fibers on people and our planet. 

In this conversation, we’re diving into fast fashion, what it is and why people are leaning more into this trend-driven way of shopping. Here’s a hint. Dopamine hits and not wanting to be seen in the same outfit twice on social media are factors in this. Plus, we’re talking about the science behind today’s latest fashion, tips on creating a capsule wardrobe that won’t break the bank and what the future of fashion and fashion sustainability holds. 

Lauren also shares more about her journey as a boilermaker. See, she was the first student at Purdue to mix engineering and design and graduated with a multidisciplinary engineering degree in 2011. She points to Purdue as one of the reasons for her massive career success, from the quality of the curriculum to the thoughtful professors and mentors who guided her along the way. So let’s get to it. Here’s my conversation with Lauren. 

Lauren, thank you so much for joining us on This Is Purdue, the Official University podcast. We’re just really eager to dive deeper into this intersection of STEM and fashion and the science behind today’s latest fashion and talk all about this industry with you. We’re going to dive into fast fashion here first. Right now, fast fashion accounts for 20% of global revenue, so $1 in every $5 spent in the industry is spent on fast fashion. As an expert at the convergence of fashion and STEM, how do you personally define fast fashion? 

Lauren Bright: 

Thanks for having me here, Kate, just want to say that first. I’m super honored to be here. Definitely been a very interesting trajectory since my time at Purdue. I would say that there are many definitions of fast fashion. I think that’s actually rapidly evolving. In fact, there’s an entirely new category of fashion that we call ultra-fast fashion. Generally speaking, a fast fashion brand would be one that does not produce clothing according to a more traditional seasonal timeline. 

So often when you look at fashion brands, in particular, the ones that I’ve worked at, they either have four seasons or two seasons that they’re working to, and generally, they design those products for about a year and a half in advance of them hitting the market. So that includes everything from doing the market development, initial product creation, and then going through all of the phases of development, creating prototypes, all of that stuff, creating all the marketing materials, and then getting out onto the market. 

And usually this two to four seasons either looks like fall and winter, summer and spring, or fall, winter, summer, spring. So I would say when we’re looking at fast fashion, you’re looking at brands who operate outside of that sort of timeline. So I guess they’re very responsive to emerging or fleeting trends, maybe you could say, easily inspired by things that are happening so they have the opportunity to be responsive, and I think there’s some technology that enables that nowadays. They also generally produce in really, really high volumes, which also equates to a lot of waste, which we can talk about. They’re often called mass market retailers, and then they often have ultra low or low prices in comparison to what other brands are putting onto the market. 

Kate Young: 

What do you think contributed to this explosive growth of fast fashion, even in the past few years? 

Lauren Bright: 

Unfortunately, I think it’s really a consequence of late stage capitalism that’s really focused on the infinite growth of a business to maximize shareholder profits instead of focusing on stakeholders or rights holders, or in general, the full value that is possible in terms of creating value across the system. I really see fast fashion as a beacon for the proliferation of extractive systems and continued colonial rule. Unfortunately, the industry itself really has its origins in colonialism. You see this with the cotton trade, there are many, many books on this. 

It’s actually very fascinating to see how cotton was a catalyst for not only colonialism, but in general capitalism and the industry, in particular, the fast fashion side that continues to perpetuate these dynamics, both with the lowest common denominator manufacturing, but also end of life textile waste trade, which is now being categorized as waste colonialism and it’s kind of this new thing that people are becoming more and more aware of. 

And I would say the last thing is that I actually really find this growth of fast fashion brands and sort of this tie to capitalism as something that’s painfully uncreative in terms of business innovation and product output. The thing that I think people are starting to miss is that textiles are actually one of the original forms of craft. They were cherished. They told stories of place and time and circumstance. They’re very personal to the people who made them into the regions with which they came, and they really co-evolved alongside humanity in terms of being able to meet our very specific and niche needs in different climate environments. 

In general, I would say when we’re looking at the impact of fast fashion brands and how they’ve been able to become more prolific in recent years, it’s made it really difficult for other organizations who are making textiles, so who are not fast fashion brands, but also consumers to make the right choice the easy choice. And some of these mass marketing campaigns, which you often see with fast fashion brands are actually, in my opinion, an abuse of the human psyche. They’re leveraging our inherent, instinctive and tribal natures against us. And I think all of that together is sort of what’s resulted in the trends of today and the desire to acquire fashion at a pace that’s really unprecedented in terms of what’s been possible throughout human history. 

Kate Young: 

Do you think social media is also impacting all of this? 

Lauren Bright: 

Oh, absolutely. The thing that’s crazy is that I’m an expert in this field and I am still pulled towards it. I mean, that just shows you the power. I mean, humans are so complex and so are the systems that we’re tied to, both psychologically and ecologically, et cetera. And what’s really fascinating is a lot of these brands who we’ve been working with for many years, they’re not hiring the regular marketing person from 30 years ago, they’re hiring people who majored in psychology. And you see this in AI and those are how the algorithms are feeding us, it’s really something that we’re up against that is, as I stated before, completely unprecedented. And we see this across a lot of industries, of course, this isn’t just fast fashion, but of course this makes fast fashion much more appealing. 

And then you also have the inherent dynamic that we’re living in today where there’s pretty vast income inequality, less expensive clothing means that people have more access to be able to maintain their other basic form of care or human needs. This sort of easy access to new products coupled with that desirability that they’re creating are obviously very determinant driving forces in terms of our purchasing decisions. 

And then I would argue going back to the previous point about textiles as craft is that all of this, in my opinion, is really tied to what I call, and maybe the industry calls like black box manufacturing, which is where the industry has really moved away from place-based making and heritage and authentic storytelling to create opaque supply chains that really give them higher levels of plausible deniability if something goes wrong. That sort of decoupling of our understanding of where textiles come from in combination with our desire to have more and more of them makes it easier for us to buy into this new model of purchasing. 

Kate Young: 

Is it appealing to people because you can buy it online quickly? What are some of the other benefits that impact humans and appeal to us? 

Lauren Bright: 

I would say that’s true. I think we’re also just in a world that demands so much of us, right? And going back to the comment about us being very tribal creatures, there’s always a new event where we need a new thing. And with social media… 

Kate Young: 

Vacation. 

Lauren Bright: 

Totally. And now there’s more access to our physical presence online and the desire to look different or new or creative, I think is a really strong pull. I also think, once again, this sort of tech-enabled ability for us to receive things at that pace has done a lot and that disconnection that I was referring to, I think we’ve started getting that dopamine hit from buying more things, whereas we used to get the dopamine hit taking the thing that we loved and cared about and had a story and had a memory around it and maybe was our grandmother’s and wearing that. I think we’re kind of replacing one thing with another form of satisfaction that is really… 

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:11:04] 

Lauren Bright: 

… form of satisfaction that is really pushed upon us, but you also see the slow fashion trend starting to really rise up in this space as well as kind of the counterbalance to what’s happening in fashion and ultra fast fashion. So I’m excited to see where that goes over time. But inherently, I would say that we are so nuanced as beings and the system is also so nuanced and it’s generally trying to drive us toward capitalistic tendencies, and yet we have these inherent desires for belonging and meaning, and it of course is leveraging those while we simultaneously seek to find them in other ways. And I think that level of access in combination with this desirability or need is sort of how the system has manifested in the way that it has today. 

Kate Young: 

And fast fashion also impacts the environment. It probably impacts our bodies by these poor synthetic fibers, what the clothes are made of. Why do you think there’s this urgent need to take action against this type of clothing? 

Lauren Bright: 

Oh my gosh, there’s so much to say about this, and I would say this is kind of where my career has evolved into in many ways, really looking at the toxicological impacts of what we’ve been producing, both from a human perspective, but also from an environmental perspective, and in general, like a broader ecological perspective. So I would say in terms of urgency, it’s really important to note that the fashion system really touches almost all aspects of planetary boundaries, and because of that, it’s very intersectional. And these planetary boundaries are… they inform and influence each other. One could create, if we overreach on one, which we have already done says the science, then that can have cascading effects. So the fashion system impacts climate change. Of course, we have an incredible amount of emissions associated with our manufacturing. It impacts land use change. So there’s a lot of deforestation, monocropping, oil extraction, et cetera, that are associated with the raw material phase of production for textile systems. 

It is part of disrupting biogeochemical flows which are the natural and cyclical pathways that transport and transform essential elements such as carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, water between living organisms to the non-living environment. So this has to do with in general nutrient flows and material flows, and we’ve been able to find in recent years in terms of fiber fragmentation and microfiber pollution that a lot of microfibers are disrupting soil microbial pathways which are essential to soil health which are essential to our food systems and our fiber systems. It’s incredible how all these things are interconnected. And then those biogeochemical flows are also associated with the carbon cycle, and the carbon cycle is also associated back to climate change and having carbon in the right carbon pools. And similarly, that’s connected to ocean acidification which is connected once again back to our climate. And then in terms of chemicals, there’s a huge impact of creating new and novel entities, which is another planetary boundary in terms of synthetic chemistries because they’re toxic, they’re persistent, they have largely consequential impacts depending on where they end up. 

I would say ignoring it as part of this larger system creates system-wide disruption that ultimately can make life here on earth uninhabitable, and that’s what it means at the systems level. But then we look at these poor quality clothing and their impact on our bodies, which we’re still studying, who even knows all of the impacts that that may cause down the line. It’s something the industry, I would say, for the last many years has been studying presence and pathways. So like how much is there, what is there, and how did it get there, and now we’re starting to go deeper into the science of what does it mean now that it is there, how is that impacting us, and that’s kind of the toxicology side. But aside from that in terms of plastic pollution, I just want to note that we also see this in fiber systems on natural materials because those natural materials are coated in chemistries that are also largely synthetic that have a bunch of consequences as well. 

So it’s very complex. I would also say aside from that, there’s a very different somatic experience in wearing plastics versus wearing naturally derived materials, and this goes back to this concept that humans co-evolved with these fiber systems over the course of many thousands, millions, I don’t even know how many, years. We were able to farm the fibers that best suited our specific needs, and it’s no coincidence that cotton which is an incredible material for being worn in warm weather climates is something that can exclusively grow in warm weather climates, and similarly for wool and the inherent performance properties that they have are really… I mean, they’re fascinating, honestly, and they’re also something that we strive to achieve in industry with synthetic fibers. 

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard a brand say when we were building our regenerative cotton coalition that I worked in, I heard a brand say, “Well, that’s interesting what you’re doing, but cotton isn’t innovative. We’re not going to focus on cotton as an innovative material.” Their minds have shifted about this dramatically, I can say, over the course of time, especially understanding cotton’s place in regenerative agriculture and in soil health and the carbon cycle and all of these things. But even just as a material itself, it’s actually something that we often try to replicate. So when we have polyester, we often texturize it. We add finishing chemistries that change its ability to wick water. We might add other performance chemistry. So yeah, it’s just interesting to me that we have this concept that it’s not innovative, yet everything we do is try to make a cheaper version of it. 

And then on top of that, a lot of the chemistries that have been used to create sort of these performance attributes are now known to be largely toxic, and they’re in our waterways, they’re in our soil systems, they’re in our blood, they’re in polar bear blood on the other side of the world. And these are the things that we now have to reckon with in terms of how we produce things moving forward, what we actually need to produce in terms of very targeted performance needs, and in general, how we can resolve some of the issues that we’ve caused from their historic production. 

Kate Young: 

And I’ve seen recent documentaries where, “Oh, I’ll just donate this when I’m done with it,” and there’s piles of T-shirts in the ocean floating. They don’t need it. They don’t want it. The effect on the environment is horrible. 

Lauren Bright: 

There’s a really amazing organization that has, I mean, gosh, I don’t even know, so many podcasts, so many resources now out and available. A lot of different small documentaries, et cetera, have been done with this organization, but they’re called the Or Foundation. It’s just O-R Foundation. And they’ve been working out of Accra, Ghana, and actually one of my projects was the first project to ever fund them after they had been working there for 10 years and working really hard to support the people of Accra as a community that is at the end of the line and highly impacted by waste colonialism. 

So what’s really interesting about the things that I think they bring up that are really, really important is that we often look at these countries in the global south that receive our waste and we go, “Oh, that’s really sad. Look at their waste problem,” when in all reality it’s our waste problem that we’ve exported to them. And we say, “Oh, boohoo, they don’t have infrastructure to support dealing with this waste. That’s why it’s polluted.” And it’s like, no, the reason that we exported it there is because we don’t have waste infrastructure to accommodate it, and if we kept all of the waste that we actually generated we would be in a very similar position and it would be very dire. 

A lot of these textiles have made their way out into the local oceans. It’s disrupted their fisheries, it’s disrupted their local markets, not even getting into bleaching and water quality. I mean, it’s just absolutely unfathomable to understand, and it’s also important to acknowledge that these are the highest functioning, I’ll say it that way, circular economies in the world. They process millions of products per year and they get little to no investment, whereas you look at businesses that are here on, we’ll just call it in the global north who are getting millions of dollars of investment and they’re going to process a million products in their first five years. 

It’s really interesting to see where the capital flows in terms of this system because there’s still a really large disconnect between the reality of the system in itself and how it’s inherently inequitable, and that’s why organizations like the Or Foundation have been very vocal in recent years, especially as the extended textile community is investing in policy and regulation that are centered around extended producer responsibility. So making it such that brands who produce things, who import them into countries, are also required to pay a certain amount that would then facilitate some sort of end-of-life recovery for those materials. And the Or Foundation, along with other organizations that I’m part of are really pushing for global extended producer responsibility, meaning that the money would flow where the textiles flow. 

Kate Young: 

Let’s dive into your time at Purdue. You were the first student at Purdue to mixed engineering and design together. So now it’s called visual design engineering, but you really have a background with multidisciplinary engineering. What does sustainability and fashion look like to you? 

Lauren Bright: 

Purdue was a really interesting experience for me. I was at some point either wanted to go to fashion school or design school, or I wanted to go to engineering school which for most people they’re like, “Okay, those things are very, very different from each other.” I’m so thankful for the program at Purdue because it allowed me to really explore the bounds of myself. It was very difficult, I might say, because with both anything in the arts as well as anything in engineering, the more time you dedicate to it, the better you are at that thing. Using both sides of my brain in such a way while I was there was absolutely exhausting. 

I remember speaking to my advisor, Chris Pekny, who I adore about this, and there were many times I think I showed up in Chris’s office with tears and I was like, “Oh, I didn’t get into this class. I have to remake my whole program.” And she really stuck with me. So I then studied abroad in Denmark for textile design, and it was there, it was Scandinavian textile design, and when I was there, that’s when I found out that the textile industry was one of the most polluting industries in the world. And one of our teachers there was a textile chemist. We had all these design- 

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:22:04] 

Lauren Bright: 

… and one of our teachers there was a textile chemist. We had all these designers as well. I mean, it was such an incredible program in general. The country of Denmark and Scandinavia at large really cares about sustainability. They care about the future of materials and progress and people. So it was something that was really formative. So then when I came back to Purdue, I was really, really fortunate that the program I was in was so flexible. I mean, to a certain degree, obviously. But it allowed me to come back and then take environmental and ecological engineering, like engineering projects and community service, all of these things that I felt like created this more holistic understanding of not textiles specifically, but just the intersection of the environment and industry and making. So that was really fascinating. 

And then when I graduated, I had no idea really how to explain that. It made a lot of sense to me. So I ended up taking a job at Chrysler. The first one that I took, they actually hired me because I had been a statistics TA while I was at Purdue. So the job was actually in what they call advanced supplier quality engineering. So I was going into the factories and doing what they call PFMEA, Process Failure Modes and Effects Analysis, which is also something that we talked about Purdue in my industrial engineering classes. So that was super helpful in getting me that initial job in the industry. We were basically trying to design out issues in production before they could occur. How do we think about all the ways that this could go wrong while we’re designing this process such that it doesn’t go wrong? 

I was really fortunate at Chrysler. They gave me a lot of opportunities to lead there. They knew that I was really interested in innovation, so I got to collaborate with the innovation team there. They knew that I was really interested in textiles, so they put me over interior systems. So I got to understand how soft goods intersect with hard goods. I think it was really informative, especially in terms of then going to an outdoor company, because I was then working for Columbia Sportswear where there was a huge focus on performance. 

My time at Columbia was really interesting because I did… The team was very small in comparison to most industry innovation teams. So I did anything from working with chemical manufacturers to develop new functional performance chemistries all the way through fiber, like yarn material and finished product design, both on designing the textile and the product itself towards a specific functional performance end, and then also on the side of developing or amending, however you would say it, updating equipment to be able to achieve that outcome. And then anything in between in terms of trying to test that in a real-life environment. So it was a very comprehensive job in terms of the way that I was able to integrate into industry and understand and learn by doing. But I think all of that was only possible because I had a very multidisciplinary background from the get-go, which was made possible to me through my time at Purdue. 

Kate Young: 

I love that. I love how interesting your career background is. I love that you talked about using both sides of your brain. You don’t normally have someone, like you said, that’s interested in design and engineering, but you made it work. That’s really cool. 

Also on the sustainability segment, we’ve talked about how it impacts our lives, the environment. What are a couple tips that you’ve developed? You’re so passionate about this topic. For anyone out there who’s trying to be more sustainable, even when ads are thrown our way or it’s kind of shoved in our face on social media, what are some practical tips that won’t break the bank, but will help us out when we’re looking for certain style pieces to elevate our wardrobe? 

Lauren Bright: 

I really love the concept that came out many years ago about a capsule collection wardrobe. I know people talk about this often on. I know people have tried to do it, and then eventually they buy more things over time, and maybe it’s not capsulated anymore. I think it’s really interesting. Of course, things have shifted, but when you look at the historic ways that Americans buy clothes versus Europeans, we always think that there’s sort of this elevated sense of style in Europe and whatever else is associated with that. 

I remember the first time that I went to Italy on a trip. I was thinking like, “Okay, I’m going to be here two to three weeks, but they have a lot of stairs. I’m going to be walking a lot. How do I make sure that I’m able to have outfits that really work for me?” That’s kind of where the capsule collection came in. It’s like, how do you make sure that there are pieces that are comfortable, that you love, that look great on your body, that work well with each other in different ways? How can you layer effectively with less pieces that then make it look like you have multiple outfits? That’s the thing that I think is probably most effective. 

I would also say that it’s just really important to recognize that textiles are the original form of craft. It’s ancient, right? They’re held close to our bodies. They are on our largest organ. So when we think about buying things that are less expensive to maybe hit a seasonal trend, the implications of that are actually vast in terms of how we feel with it on our bodies, not only how we feel about our purchase, but also sort of the long-term consequences. Because obviously if you understood that chemistries were toxic, you wouldn’t be putting them against your largest organ, which is a pathway potentially into your body. So I think that’s a really important aspect. 

I would also say I’m personally obsessed with buying secondhand. A lot of pieces, especially I live in Portland, Oregon, so we have a very good thrift scene here. I want to acknowledge that not all thrift scenes are the same, but there’s a culture of that here, which I think is really cool. People feel a big sense of pride in it. When you ask people where they got things, it’s like, “Oh, this is my favorite thrift store. We get in this section, and this is an heirloom piece that I would want to pass down to my daughter or whomever.” 

I also think there’s an opportunity. This is another thing that’s culturally really relevant, I would say, specifically here in Portland, but also generally on the West Coast, I’ve seen it a lot, but participating in this sort of trading and sharing culture. So there’s a lot of buy-nothing groups, so groups where people show up, and they’re like, “Hey, here are the things that I’m not likely to wear again or I don’t wear that often, but they’re still of good quality.” 

Kate Young: 

Absolutely. I think, too, thrifting has become more popular with Gen Z. I’m a millennial personally. Again, in Indiana, I think the scene is a little bit different. But I feel like Gen Zs are very into and prideful about thrifting. So I love that you touched on that. 

I think wedding culture has really, really… Between the bachelorette parties and the rehearsal dinners and every event, you have to have something new and then the guests have to have something new. 

Lauren Bright: 

Oh, my gosh. Don’t even get me started on that. The fact that the wedding industry is an industry at all upsets me. So I totally understand that. 

Actually, a number of years ago, when I started my business, when I started my consultancy, I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t buy any new clothing items at all for a year unless it came from a brand that I really, really, really deeply trusted or I thrifted it. And I ended up not buying anything at all for the year at all, which I was so proud of myself about. And then it was so interesting. There were two things that I noticed. One was that it got way easier over time. 

Kate Young: 

I bet. 

Lauren Bright: 

Another was that a lot of it was about dopamine. I found myself even… The reason I ended up not buying anything is because I went to brands that I trusted, and I went on their website. I was clicking through, and I would get to the end, and I would have all these things in my cart. And then I would wait and I would be like, “Okay, I’m going to click yes on this cart or confirm, whatever it says, tomorrow or I’ll come back in a few hours.” Without fail, every time when I came back in a few hours, I was like, “I don’t need it.” 

Kate Young: 

I don’t need this. 

Lauren Bright: 

I don’t need it. It was so weird. And that’s not the case today, but I did when I eventually bought something again. I bought a Reformation dress. The Reformation is a brand that I deeply respect. They’ve been a really big part of my personal journey in terms of my understanding of clothing and brands that I wanted to work for. And then at some point was very fortunate to be able to work with, and I consider them a close partner. I bought one dress from them, and I wore it to five weddings. 

Kate Young: 

I love that. 

Lauren Bright: 

Every time, people would be like, “Wow, that is so beautiful. It looks so good on you.” And I was just like, “Wow, you’re right.” Nobody noticed. Nobody cared. It was just a thing that I loved. And that dress is infamous in my friend circle. Everybody’s like, “So I have a wedding. What about that green dress?” 

Kate Young: 

That’s another thing. My group of friends, when it was peak late 20s, early 30s wedding season in life, we would share dresses like, “Hey, you want to wear this one?” Especially if you have different friend groups, nobody notices, nobody cares. So that was my little way of helping the sustainability crisis. 

Lauren Bright: 

Yeah, I think the culture of sharing is also a culture of community building, which is something that is also really special and something uniquely suited to the textile industry again in terms of its ability to create connections between people. 

Kate Young: 

I love that. Okay, tell us about your current role in Torus. 

Lauren Bright: 

So Torus is a collective action consultancy. I founded it because I was working in an industry at the time, and I was always, as I kind of noted earlier, this grassroots activist, and I noticed there were just a lot of barriers to adoption for the types of really meaningful work that I wanted to do within the brands. Of course, I’m not asking by saying that, I would not expect a mass exodus of the grassroots activists from the brands. We really need them in the brands. But what I realized is that there was a huge knowledge gap in terms of how products are made and then the people in sustainability or nonprofits or whatever who were trying to create the direction for the industry to go in. So there was pretty much no adoption on the in between. The industry was really working at a very incremental pace in terms of progress, glacial pace, some might say, and it’s still largely like that. 

But I think having a higher level of competency in terms of how things are made and deep empathy in terms of how decisions are made within a business then makes it possible for the organizations who hold a lot of knowledge across these sort of systems change platforms, are able to then integrate into these businesses and then execute on their- 

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:33:04] 

Lauren Bright: 

… able to then integrate into these businesses and then execute on their potential objectives. So my Collective Impact consultancy has generally had what I would call a fiscal sponsor. We’ve been partnering with nonprofits who have a vision or an idea. And I’ve basically just been building a bridge between those nonprofits, brands, innovators, municipalities, government agencies and in general, other rights holders to leverage that sort of collective knowledge, expertise, and infrastructure to move away from these theoretical concepts and really into implementation. 

And I would say that’s the thing that I personally love the most that I think is most important. I think there’s been a lot of talk in this industry for many years about what we could do and a lot of work in trying to measure and monitor. And there’s a big conversation now around what amount of measuring and monitoring is needed for us to actually have directionally-appropriate information that would allow us to start to implement things now. So I’m sort of on the side of the equation now, and this is highly debated, just want to say, but I’m on the side now, where I feel like we have, in a lot of ways, enough information to starting even if the data isn’t perfect. 

And notably, a lot of the data that the industry has been asking about or asking for or had been asked for in the last many years has to do with lifecycle analysis, which I’m going to guess is probably something that’s spoken about a lot at Purdue now in some of their programs, especially because environmental and ecological engineering really took off as a program within the university, which is really exciting. One of the things that is true about lifecycle analysis is that it’s limited in scope. And the reason that it’s limited, in my opinion, which is maybe not the most gracious interpretation, but it’s that we either measure the things that we know we can measure or we measure the things that we know make us look good. And what’s really interesting is making that specific statement to the head of the Biomimicry Institute many years ago is actually what got me my first ever contract as a consultant with Taurus. And it sort of led into one of my biggest projects, which is called the Nature of Fashion Design for Transformation. 

Of course, it wasn’t just myself that did this. Everything that I do is in collaboration with people way smarter than myself. They’re all brilliant. They all have such beautiful things to contribute. And I think the web and the intersectional way that we all think together always manifests into something that’s really powerful. So that turned into, as I noted, the Design for Transformation Initiative, which ended up having a series of global and interconnected pilots, two of them happening in Europe. So one in Berlin, another one in Rotterdam, one happening in Accra, Ghana with the organization that I mentioned earlier, the Or Foundation, and then a few different bodies of research that happened between the University of Leeds in the UK and also Yale’s Green Chemistry Department here in the US. 

We were basically just trying to understand more about this concept, like how would we start looking at materials differently? How do we make better chemical decisions knowing that there’s a biological reality for these materials and chemistries? What does it look like to take the most toxic textile waste that the industry is not trying to recycle because it kind of falls out of their recycling parameters and acknowledge that at one point it was just a basic chemistry that was part of the natural material flows of this world? So how do we get it back to that point? So something that is toxic then becomes part of the bio-economy again. And how can we do that leveraging existing infrastructure or easily scalable known infrastructure that’s exploited in a new way to push us towards those biological outcomes? 

And how can we do that sooner rather than later such that we don’t get into a technical gridlock that requires us to feed the beast with all these toxic materials that we’ve made historically, but is agile enough for the outputs to shift as hopefully the new materials in the future that come into the system are also shifting towards a healthier materials palette. So it was very complex. It was so hard. It was so beautiful and it was really powerful. I guess basically we were able to turn all of that into meaningful work that then allowed for further rounds of funding so they could scale that up. 

And then also we are granted a EPA grant. So the EPA portion has kind of shifted outside of what the Biomimicry Institute is hosting, but I am doing that project now through my consultancy, really leading that work to use biotechnology in the Carolinas, which is a historical textile manufacturing region in the US to do a bunch of very cool stuff. We’re basically recovering complex blended textile waste and returning it into the bio-economy through soil amendments, through agricultural textiles, through pharmaceuticals with one of the largest pharmaceutical manufacturers in the world, and also back into textiles themselves. So it’s very powerful, it’s very inspiring. Some of it is still very much conceptual, but the near-term reality is there and the infrastructure exists and the people are so excited and willing to do it. 

Kate Young: 

That’s incredible. What do you think the future of fashion, fashion sustainability holds and what are people like you, the innovators doing to take steps to change consumer behavior? 

Lauren Bright: 

Yeah, I think social media is actually doing a lot of work for us. The level of exposure that is, and thus risk for big brands or small brand, any kind of brands, any manufacturer that’s accessible to people now is historically really unheard of. So I think that, in and of itself, has precipitated so much change in the industry. And I know there’s been an incredible amount of work in the industry around water access and water rights. Of course, the textile industry uses a lot of water, so you’ve seen a lot of investments in that space. You’ve seen governments coming together. There have been organizations like Greenpeace who put out reports on the toxicity of PFAS chemistries used in textiles that created a lot of change in the industry. 

There are a lot of nonprofits that focus on different aspects of the supply chain. Some focus on collective de-carbonization, so how can we get a lot of brands together in a specific factory or in a specific region to enable the future of renewable energy in that region or other carbon emissions related projects. This work around renewable energy and electrification, a lot of it’s happening individually at brands, but there’s an organization called the Apparel Impact Institute that’s facilitating that on behalf of brands and doing a lot of partnership with outdoor brands and the Outdoor Industry Association to do that. There’s another organization called Textile Exchange that does a lot at the raw material stage. They do a lot in setting standards, so brands can basically have their supply chains verified through these standards that hold them to a higher level of accountability and assurance in terms of what’s happening all the way back to raw material extraction. 

And then you have sort of this global network of organizations that have arisen out of industry need to tackle specific scopes of work. And like I said, I mentioned some of them, but there are other ones like Blue Sign or ZDHC. And then you have a number of organizations who are also popping up on the very front end of materials design and development. 

Kate Young: 

Thank you so much, Lauren. It was a pleasure. And if you want to learn more about Lauren, about her company, you can reference our show notes. 

So thanks again, Lauren. 

Lauren Bright: 

Yeah, thank you so much, Kate, for having me. 

Kate Young: 

That conversation with Lauren really got my wheels turning. Between the dopamine hits from buying things to looking more into the thrifting scene, I learned a lot from her insights. We linked more information about Lauren’s company, Taurus, and other resources she discussed in this episode in our show notes, so be sure to check that out. And if you want to watch additional bonus content from this interview, like Lauren’s take on The Devil Wears Prada 2 movie and who actually decides what’s in style, head over to our YouTube page, youtube.com/ThisIsPurdue and hit that subscribe button while you’re over there. Plus, be sure to follow This is Purdue on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. 

This is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young. Our podcast videography for this episode was led by Thad Boone. Our social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. Our podcast design is led by Cheryl Glotzbach. Our podcast team project manager is Rain Gu. Our podcast YouTube promotions is managed by Megan Hoskins. Additional writing and research assistance is led by Ashvini Malshi. 

Thanks for listening to This Is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcast. From there, you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. And don’t forget, you can also check out all of our podcast content on our podcast YouTube page, youtube.com/@/ThisIsPurdue. 

And as always, Boiler Up. 

PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [00:42:51]

Krystal Hans: This is Krystal Hans, and you’re listening to This Is Purdue. 

Kate Young: Hi, I’m Kate Young, and you’re listening to This Is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking. Who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators? Who are these boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty, and alumni taking small steps towards their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same. 

Krystal Hans: We have what’s called the CSI effect, and it’s from living in this world with all of this exposure to what we think forensic science and investigation looks like. The reality is that if you have a group of people selected to be jurors in a trial and they come in with these preconceived notions of, “Okay, I’ve seen it on TV,” or “I’ve listened to podcasts, I know what to expect,” they get into the courtroom and they are disappointed. It’s not nearly as exciting as what they show on Law and Order. They’re expecting that every case, every scene has DNA evidence, has fingerprints, has all of these different components and so then that disappointment can affect their decisions that they’re making so it can have a pretty significant effect in the real world. 

Kate Young: In this episode of This Is Purdue, we’re talking to Krystal Hans, Director of Forensic Science and Assistant Professor of Forensic Entomology at Purdue University’s College of Agriculture. 

Now, if I had to guess, I’m assuming most of you out there have listened to a true-crime podcast series or watched some type of a real life cold case investigation documentary. In today’s day and age, these stories have been embedded into our culture through all different forms of media. And just before this interview, Krystal and I were talking about different true crime cases that really caught our attention growing up. For me, it was the unsolved killing of JonBenet Ramsey in Colorado and the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart from her home in Utah. Both were young girls who were around my age, and I vividly remember the headlines splashed everywhere when these horrible crimes were committed. Since then, the public’s fascination with true crime has only grown. 

In this interview, Krystal is digging into what this true crime culture gets wrong about forensic science and cold cases and how she intentionally works to center education, empathy, and advocacy when it comes to solving cases and helping victims’ families. Krystal has a passion for engaging students, especially in her popular forensic investigation class at Purdue, where students have the opportunity to research real life cold cases. That’s right, we’re digging into cases where boilermakers have made true impacts right here in Indiana. From talking to police, researching old case files and more, Krystal is explaining her overall goal of reframing how her students think about these victims and their loved ones. And as the only board certified forensic entomologist in the Midwest, Krystal is explaining how insects affect crime investigations and cold cases. I guarantee you’ll learn a thing or two in today’s episode. So let’s get to it. Here’s my conversation with Krystal. 

Krystal, thank you so much for joining us on This Is Purdue. We were talking earlier, everyone on our team is so excited for this episode. I know our listeners are going to love this as well. Let’s get to it. Society’s obsession with true crime has really peaked in recent years with social media, with Netflix documentaries, with true-crime podcasts. Where do you think this interest really comes from? 

Krystal Hans: I think it’s been an interest for a long time. I think we’re at a point in our society that we have access to so much information and it’s so easy to spread that information through social media. And we have all of these different media tools that are really fostering that kind of innate interests that people have in crime, interest that they have in death and in some of the horrible things that happen in our society. 

Kate Young: Why do you think this type of popular media can affect real life investigations? Have you seen this happen? 

Krystal Hans: We see this happen pretty frequently where people listen to a podcast, they have an idea of this is how an investigation works. These are the types of evidence that we would expect. And then when law enforcement doesn’t report everything that they do, they’re not communicating their findings, they’re keeping things kind of close to the investigation, people are sometimes disappointed and frustrated because they don’t see the same kind of movement or resolution. Podcasts always try to focus on success stories and seeing that resolution, people are sometimes disappointed when they don’t see it play out in the real world. 

Kate Young: So how does the public interest in true crime impact your work as a forensic entomology professor? 

Krystal Hans: In terms of forensic entomology, that’s one of those niche areas in forensic science where people sometimes are familiar that there’s insects involved, but they don’t necessarily understand the role that they can play as a type of physical evidence. By having access to podcasts and crime dramas and going back to the early 2000s with CSI, being that early show, kind of a front-runner, it started to give the public a little bit of insight into some of these niche areas and other ways that we can provide a service. So I think it’s beneficial for me because it exposes people and at least gets them, “Oh, I’ve heard that term before.” 

Kate Young: Let’s dive into it. Tell our listeners, how do insects impact some of these crime scenes and cases? 

Krystal Hans: Forensic entomology is the use of insects as a type of evidence for different types of investigations. And we can use insects for a variety of different applications. We can use them in an urban setting. So we think about infestations. Bedbugs have been in the news pretty frequently, cockroach infestations. It could be something where there’s a lawsuit, somebody wants to sue their landlord, we can use information about those insects to support or refute that lawsuit. More traditionally, forensic entomology is often used in cases of abuse and neglect or in death investigations of both animals and humans. And so our insects, our forensically relevant insects are really well adapted to be able to smell very strong odors of decomposition. They arrive relatively quickly after death. And as a forensic entomologist, I can collect those insects, determine what type of species it is, figure out how old they are and how long they’ve been associated with the body, and that gives us an estimate of the minimum amount of time that the insects have been active. 

Kate Young: So that can help determine how long potentially the body has been there? 

Krystal Hans: Absolutely. So for an investigation, that can speak to the timeline that law enforcement is looking for. 

Kate Young: Was there a specific high profile case that sparked your interest in forensic science when you were younger? 

Krystal Hans: So we had already mentioned a few of the cases that were popular when we were younger, but for me, my entry into forensic science wasn’t because I saw a case or because I watched CSI or any of those shows. I always tell people that I was a weird kid and my nickname was Creepy Krystal, which I’ve turned into a career and I’ve come to embrace, but as a kid, I think I was a little bit hurt that people thought I was creepy. And so I’m allergic to animals that have fur and feathers, so I’ve never had a traditional pet. But my mom was always very supportive of my love of insects and arthropods, and I got into the habit of collecting them and bringing them inside for short periods of time to have pets. I just kind of always had a fascination wandering around, trying to find insects, and there’s a lot of insect activity on animal carcasses that you come across in the woods. 

So that association, people found a little bit creepy that I was interested in things like maggots. And then when I was in my undergrad, I had a completely different career path. I thought I was going to go to medical school. I was interested in science and my advisor said, “You have two options. You can become a science teacher or you can go to medical school and become a medical doctor.” And back then I said, “Oh, well, I don’t think I want to go into teaching,” which is ironic considering my position now. And so I went along the path of medical school, and it wasn’t until my senior year that I went to a seminar where a medical examiner talked about maggots being on remains at autopsy. And I went up and approached him. I said, “Tell me more about maggots.” His response was, “Ugh, you like maggots?” 

Kate Young: He probably normally didn’t get that. 

Krystal Hans: Yeah, most people don’t have that reaction. And he said, “Forensic entomology, that’s the field that you should be looking into.” And that was a new area for me. Nobody had told me that along my path. And so it really changed my entire trajectory and got me into this field. 

Kate Young: And what brought you to Purdue? 

Krystal Hans: Oh, I mean, Purdue has such a long history in our entomology department being one of the oldest departments. I mean, it was a very easy decision for me to make to come and be a part of this fantastic department. 

Kate Young: So we talked about CSI, you think of Law and Order, there’s so many spinoffs of these shows. What makes real life forensic scientists like yourself different from the public’s perception? How are TV shows different from real life? 

Krystal Hans: Yeah, I always tell my students, because that’s usually their perception of forensic scientists or the world of investigation. And what they see on TV is a much more dramatic and glamorized version. So on TV, they show the forensic scientists doing everything, going to the scene, they’re back in the lab, they’re analyzing, they’re talking to suspects, they’re getting search warrants. They confuse the roles of a lot of different people. On TV, they would show somebody in a suit at a crime scene with no gloves and no protective gear collecting evidence. And then when the students learn about what does it really look like and what are the precautions that we take and how are these different roles divided? I think sometimes they’re disappointed when I explain the timelines for investigations. I have cases that I work on that they don’t get neatly packaged and resolved within a short time like they show on TV. And sometimes it’s years before it goes to trial, if it does go to trial. So I think there’s sometimes that disappointment when they learn how it actually plays out in the real world. 

Kate Young: I was telling you before this, I just watched the Elizabeth Smart documentary on Netflix. I believe it took 10 years. They caught the man who kidnapped her and it took that long to go to trial. So that was spread out that long, that the emotions that she had and having to go to trial and testify and everything, the fact that the system takes that long, it’s not like TV or movies. 

Krystal Hans: That’s one case that actually did see resolution. There’s a lot of cases that unfortunately don’t even get to that point. 

Kate Young: So let’s get into your class. Your class has grown to over 200 students, that’s incredible. And like I said at the beginning, students are working on multiple real life cold cases. They’re gathering research and information, whether it’s unsolved, missing person cases, homicide cases. You and I talked before, this is generally for victims of communities that unfortunately don’t receive a lot of media attention, but at the end of the semester, these students can really make a difference and an impact on these cases because the materials are sent onto the families of the victims. So it’s really hands-on. So tell us a little bit about how the class is structured and why you think it’s gained so much popularity. 

Krystal Hans: This class, I’ve been teaching it five years now. And when I first was offered this class to teach, I was trying to think about what can we do to train our students in different techniques and investigation, whether they plan to pursue a career in forensic science, law enforcement, or something else? What are the tools that we can provide to make them successful wherever they end up? And I started to think about there’s an opportunity here for students to play a role in this cold case world. And again, building on that podcast and all of this exposure that they get, there’s a lot of interest for students to participate. I actually had a student that was in one of my classes who is a survivor and her family member was a victim of a violent homicide. And in talking with her about advocacy and what she did to support her sister’s case, I started to think about, well, how can undergraduates contribute to that mission? What can we do? 

And so that really led to me developing this project that tries to serve the families of these unresolved homicides and missing person cases and try to show that there’s a lot of collective impact that we can do even as undergraduate students in a class. And so the way that I’ve designed this project is I’ve partnered with Project: Cold Case, who’s my partner for a lot of different cold case missions that I’m sure we’re going to talk about, and working with the families that are interested in having their loved one’s case research. I train the students throughout the semester about how to locate publicly available information, how to file records requests, how to try to communicate with law enforcement to request a meeting or request documents or get some questions answered. 

And then what we try to do for the families is we try to focus on the visual elements in creating social media awareness campaigns. So my students create three different types of social media visuals that can be shared on different platforms. They create an infographic to summarize the case. And then at the end of the semester, they provide a presentation to explain to the rest of the class, “Here’s what we did, here are the challenges that we faced, and then here’s the results of all of our work.” And so the families, they get access to all of that information and it’s up to them if they want to share it. It’s their choice. 

Kate Young: Because I imagine sometimes digging into that stuff either brings up past trauma or they don’t fully maybe understand it, we talked about maybe some of the people are older and don’t fully understand social media. So these students are handing them this package, if you want to post this, here’s how you do it. So that’s just a really interesting way to handle that and make an impact. 

Krystal Hans: And for some of the families, they don’t have access to some of the information or the students have recovered a list of names of people that they think might be associated. And the families, they respond with, “Oh, I don’t know who these people are, these are additional things that I want to bring up when I have my meeting with our detective.” Or, “We get access to case files,” and the family never got access to those. So being able to provide them with something tangible. And I always tell the families, “If nothing else, there’s no obligation, you don’t have to respond, you don’t have to use anything, but if nothing else, just know that there’s a group of people at Purdue that are thinking about your loved one.” 

Kate Young: What do you think that value is to have students working on real life cases? 

Krystal Hans: Different cases have impact for different people based on relatability. And so for some of my students, they get to choose the case from a curated list that’s provided. And some of them, they say, “Oh, we chose this case because this victim is our age. This victim was a student. This victim is from my hometown.” Or, “I remember hearing about this case, but I didn’t really learn about a lot of the information.” So I think for the students, they’re able to see that these are real people. And I always try to stress, again, going back to those podcasts and the shows, sometimes the information that gets kind of sensationalized is focus on the perpetrator, focus on the violent nature of the crime, not that there’s a whole family of people that cared about that individual. And so trying to reframe how my students perceive forensic science, how they communicate about the victim, making sure that they’re using victim-centered language. 

And I think that if nothing else, I want them to go out into the world with a more empathetic viewpoint of what these crimes can do and all of the people that are impacted by that. 

Kate Young: I want to dig into that shift of the perspective of focusing on that real human element and that victim-centered language. I think certain documentaries or podcasts do a good job of talking about the victim and remembering who they were and others really sensationalize the perpetrator. And the Elizabeth Smart documentary, it’s just top of mind because I just watched it, they really didn’t talk about the person who did it. They really focused on her and her family and her story, and I think that was purposeful. Talk about why that’s a good lesson for the students to approach it that way. 

Krystal Hans: It makes them kind of see the human element that’s involved. A lot of my students come in and one of the first questions I asked the beginning of the semester, “How many people can name a serial killer?” Almost everybody’s hands go up and they can rattle off a whole slew of them. And I say, “Well, how many people can name a victim of any of those serial killers?” And they say, “Oh,” that really starts that conversation about how our society frames and approaches a lot of these investigations and what types of material get released and what people have access to. So again, just trying to make sure that my students are thinking about that human impact so that if they go into law enforcement, forensic science, social work, advocacy, they’re at least thinking back to this experience and they’ve learned that there’s a better approach that we can do. 

Kate Young: So what lessons do your students usually walk away with from your class? 

Krystal Hans: I think one of the biggest things, students say, “Okay, we’re going to work on this case. I want you to look for as much information as possible.” And sometimes they’re under this assumption that, “Well, I’ll just Google it and I’ll get access to everything.” And they’ll say, “I’ll just ask for the case file and law enforcement’s going to give me everything I want, the scene photos, all of the reports.” And I think the students are often disappointed when they can’t easily access this information and they have to learn about other channels and other mechanisms that they can use. And when law enforcement says, “Unfortunately, this is an active investigation and we can’t provide you with the file,” the students are like, “But I thought I would easily be able to get this. What do you mean I can’t have access to this?” 

And so what that does is when we talk about those challenges, I put it in the perspective of, “Okay, now imagine you’re a loved one and this is your family member and you’re trying to get information and you’re trying to meet with law enforcement, you’re trying to get these files and they say, “No, we can’t share that with you.” How do you feel at that point?” And so I think it really helps the students to understand how it works in the real world. And some of those challenges I think are good lessons that they can’t just easily access everything just from their phone. 

Kate Young: Are there any well-known Indiana cold case investigations that your students have worked on and contributed to? 

Krystal Hans: There’s one in particular that I think was a really powerful case and very obvious impact. So when I first started this project, I had an incredible student, Brayden Johnson, and I explained the project, explained what the purpose was. We were focusing on Indiana cases and I had this list and he came up to me at the end of class and he said, “There’s one particular case, would our team be able to work on it?” And I said, “Well, let me know a little bit more information.” And he said, “Well, it’s my wife’s great aunt.” And I said, “If you can get permission and consent from the family, absolutely, then we can have you work on that for the semester.” So he showed up to the next class with a binder full of newspaper clippings, notes that the family had taken, basically all of their information. He said, “Here’s the consent, here’s the permission.” 

And so because we had that permission, Brayden was able to work with his team for the duration of the semester, completing all of the assignments, but really going above and beyond. Janet Shirar was a school teacher in Kokomo who was violently killed in May of 1980. And there had been a suspect at the time, somebody that she was friends with that was supposed to be visiting for the weekend and the investigation just really kind of stalled out. There was no real progress. There had been some evidence that had been recovered inside of her home. She had been stabbed multiple times. There was a knife that had been cleaned off. One of her outfits that she wore pretty frequently was missing from her closet and she was found in her bathroom. 

Over the years, the family tried to pressure law enforcement to make some movement on this case and just didn’t really seem to go anywhere. Now in 2016, a chair from Janet’s apartment had been tested because there was blood evidence that was found on it, but the results were never made clear to the family and there was no more discussion about it. And so when Brayden and his team started to work on this, they started to put together all of this very tangled web of people that are associated with Janet’s case and tried to make an association of who could be involved and why was there not more media coverage about this and why did it just kind of fall to the wayside? 

And so Brayden was actually able to set up several meetings with the detective who was on the case, be able to go through the case and ask about certain key pieces of evidence, follow up about that chair, what were the results of that? Here are the people that we think are of interest. And the detective was able to provide additional answers about the case. And then because of those discussions and because of all of the work that the students had performed, the detective was able to follow up with that person of interest and question her and get additional information. 

What came from all of that, so Brayden did incredible work, the whole team did. The detective had confirmed, we believe that this is the person who committed this crime. There had been fingerprint evidence that had been recovered from Janet’s home. They had identified that this woman had been in the house and she said that she had been visiting. Unfortunately, the fingerprints that were recovered from the chair, they weren’t able to make an association, that those were her bloody fingerprints. So for the family, they feel that they’ve made progress. They have identified somebody that they’re almost certain has committed this crime. But unfortunately, sometimes what we see in these cold cases is that lack of evidence is the reason why we can’t get resolution. 

His work was really powerful. And again, having that case that he was connected to, so personally, married into the family and connected to, made it a lot more compelling for him and his team to work on. And I actually invited him to speak at the Cold Case Symposium in 2023 to share the power of student work and kind of hopefully inspire some of the other undergraduates of, this is what you can do. This is the collective impact that you can have. 

Kate Young: Have any of these cases influenced you personally throughout the years? 

Krystal Hans: Oh, I mean, I think they all do. I think I try to bring that to the classroom with my students, and I’m very transparent about the emotional impact of the work and the emotional impact of forensic science. And so I’m intentional with what’s called trauma-informed pedagogy. So making sure that we’re incorporating a lot of these themes of, there is a lot of trauma when we’re talking about violent crimes, whether you’re a student learning about it or you’re a professional that’s working and living in this world, whether you think it’s going to affect you or not, this really does kind of shape our emotional impact along the way. And so I’m very intentional with students to explain, these are my thoughts about this and these are real people. These are families that I communicate with regularly. The responses that I get from families, I think that’s when I really … It hits me the hardest. 

Kate Young: And even like you said, if you’re not putting a bow on it and tying it up and that’s that, if there are some answers or some type of, “Wow, this is a new list of names that we didn’t know about,” I mean, some answers are better than none at the end of the day, and I’m sure they’re so appreciative. 

Krystal Hans: And again, for the families, just knowing that somebody’s thinking about them, that their loved one hasn’t been forgotten, I think that that has a lot of power. 

Kate Young: So you lead your own forensic entomology lab at Purdue and you mentor undergraduate and graduate students and experiments. What are you guys currently working on within that lab? 

Krystal Hans: We work on a lot of different applications of forensic entomology. A lot of the questions that we have are based on real world experiences that I have from cases. So I’ll get called to a scene, I’m collecting evidence, it’s usually an unusual circumstance, and law enforcement will say, how does this affect the insects? And I’ll say, “That’s a great question. Let’s research that.” And so a lot of our questions come from my own personal experience. 

So we had a student a few years ago, I was at a scene and the remains were concealed and law enforcement said, “Oh, we had a body that was in concrete. How would that affect it?” And I said, “Ugh, I don’t know. Let’s do that project.” So we did a decomposition project over a six-month period so that we can answer law enforcement’s questions so that the next time I get approached about that, or if I got a case related to that, I would have some information about how that affects our insects and how it affects decomposition. So we look at factors that affect decomposition, we look at insect behavior and how that can change with environmental parameters. So a lot of the behavior of our insects is driven by the environment that they’re in. 

And then recently we’ve moved into what’s called archeoentomology. That’s an area where we’re applying the information about insects that are recovered from historic grave sites. And so we have some that are from 1770s and we have some that are 3,000 years old. So we’re able to provide some analysis of those insect, it’s usually fragments at that point, to answer questions about the time of year that the remains were buried, when they were interred, or about the environment itself, so different types of insects that are associated with different environments. So we’re trying to kind of expand those different applications, how we can use insects in lots of different areas. 

Kate Young: Is there a benefit to centering your research here in the Midwest with the entomology angle? 

Krystal Hans: Being housed in an entomology department is a really big benefit for me, having access to so many colleagues with so many different specialties. And so one in particular, our insect diagnostician, we sometimes have these tiny insect fragments and we can say, “Hey, do you have any ideas of what we should be looking for? We think this is a part of a beetle. Can you help us?” And he’ll be like, “Oh, check this out.” And he’ll provide resources for us. So I think having access to so many different experts in entomology is a huge benefit. But in terms of the kind of casework and access to that, the Midwest has a lot of opportunities. So I’m the only board certified forensic entomologist in the Midwest, so I get contacted from all different surrounding states. So I think it’s been a really great opportunity to be able to really expand my network and help as many different agencies as possible. 

Kate Young: How is Hans Forensics driving progress in this field? Sounds like you are working on all different types of cases. What strides do you hope to make in the future too? 

Krystal Hans: One of the areas that I’ve recently been trying to train different investigators in, so I train law enforcement across the country, and a lot of them are traditional investigators, so going back to those death investigations and how we can use insect evidence, but there’s also a really big need in the veterinary forensic science world. So a lot of the crimes that are committed against animals, so whether it’s abuse, neglect, or death of an animal, we can use the same principles of forensic entomology to answer those questions as well. And so what we’ve been trying to do over the last couple of years is focus on animal investigators, focus on fish and wildlife and be able to offer our services and explain, here’s another tool that you might want to consider, and here’s how forensic entomology can help your investigations as well. And so we’ve really been able to expand that network and hopefully convince some veterinary forensic scientists that this is a tool that they can kind of call on. 

Kate Young: We talked a little bit about the Cold Case Symposium. Every other year it is held at Purdue, and in this fall it’s going to take place at Purdue again. Tell us a little bit about this event and how it came about. 

Krystal Hans: The Cold Case Symposium, the idea started in 2022, going back to the conversation that I had with a student who’s a survivor. I was thinking about the families and thinking about access that they have to resources. I’ve attended a lot of cold case trainings and other events, and they’re almost always for law enforcement or forensic professionals, and the families are historically excluded from that. And I wanted to really offer something that was specifically for those families, so that, again, they knew that there’s a community of people that care, that their loved one’s story matters, and that we want to share that. The first one was in Arizona in 2022, and I brought that student along with me so she could share her sister’s story. And we actually had all survivors that spoke that very first event. So all of them were family members that had a missing or unresolved homicide case. 

What we tried to do was offer a unique opportunity where we could bring together the families, the advocates, showcase some of the resources that they have access to, as well as welcome law enforcement and forensic professionals, and then also being mindful of students and academics and sharing the work that students do and how they can contribute to this world. So from that first event, the feedback that we got, especially from the survivors and the families, was so positive that we said, “Okay, we have to host this every year.” That first event, I had invited Ryan Backmann from Project: Cold Case to speak and share his story as a survivor who started this incredible organization that now supports almost 2,000 families across the US and tries to offer a lot of resources that are much needed in this space. After he shared his story, I realized this is an organization that I would love to partner with to be able to plan these future events. 

And so that’s what we’ve done. The last four years we have partnered and brought this symposium to different locations. So to Purdue in 2023, Jacksonville, Florida, which is where Project: Cold Case is based out of in 2024. And in 2024, we expanded it to two days because we had so many speakers and so many resources and just so many things that we wanted to be able to offer for these families. And I think one of the things that Ryan and I are both really proud of in doing this work is that a couple years ago we had US flags flown over the Capitol in honor of the missing and murdered. And at the end of each of the cold case symposium days, we have what’s called the Survivor’s Platform, where we ask any survivors in the audience if they’re comfortable, if they want to come up and share about their loved one, tell us who they are as a person, they share their story and then we present them with this flag in honor of their loved one. 

And so we’ve been able to do that the last couple of years. And I think it’s a really powerful statement that again, we are thinking about your loved one, we are all thinking about them and just knowing that they have a community of support and that’s really what we’ve been trying to focus on. 

Kate Young: There’s also that community aspect for families to share that empathy with other families. And sometimes if you go through something like that, you can only relate to someone else who’s gone through something like that, right? 

Krystal Hans: Absolutely. And that’s some of the feedback that we hear from the families is they had an opportunity to meet other families in the same situation and discuss similar or different challenges that they’ve had or learn from others’ experiences. And it maybe triggers something where they’re like, “Maybe we should ask our detective about this.” I think there’s a lot of impact in bringing all of those different people together. 

Kate Young: What can we expect this fall at Purdue? 

Krystal Hans: Well, it’s a little bit early now, but we’re hoping to host it in October here at Purdue, still planning on the two days. And we think that we’re maybe going to include some kind of a workshop element that can focus on media involvement with families. And so going back to these podcasts and the true crime world, some of the interactions that these families have with media can sometimes be very negative. And it’s not necessarily intentional on the reporter’s side or on the podcaster side, they just don’t know how best to approach some of these questions or the language to use to frame it. And so being intentional and not re-traumatizing these family members just to exploit their story for a podcast or an article. So we think that we want to incorporate some kind of a workshop element to train people that are in media or students that are thinking they want to work in this world, how can you best approach it and how should you be communicating these questions and thinking about these stories? 

Kate Young: So we started at the top talking about people’s fascination with true crime. And then of course we have all these Instagram sleuths, Reddit, TikTok, they’re kind of being detectives from their couch. How have you seen this shape real life cases? 

Krystal Hans: We have what’s called the CSI effect, and it’s from living in this world with all of this exposure to what we think forensic science and investigation looks like. The reality is that if you have a group of people selected to be jurors in a trial and they come in with these preconceived notions of, “Okay, I’ve seen it on TV or I’ve listened to podcasts, I know what to expect.” They get into the courtroom and they are disappointed. It’s not nearly as exciting as what they show on Law & Order. And then they’re expecting that every case, every scene has DNA evidence, has fingerprints, has all of these different components. 

Kate Young: And it’s open and shut. 

Krystal Hans: Yes, yes. And they’re looking for, “Okay, well, if they didn’t have fingerprints, then law enforcement didn’t do their job.” And so then that disappointment can affect their decisions that they’re making. So it can have a pretty significant effect in the real world. 

Kate Young: On the other hand though, we’ve seen different documentaries and different cases where the public has helped or thousands of tips have come in, I’m thinking of the Amy Bradley documentary on Netflix where she went missing from a cruise ship years and years ago and that new documentary on Netflix, now there’s thousands of new tips. I don’t know if any of that will amount to anything, but what do you think of the positives that also come from this? 

Krystal Hans: We always hear this phrase, a fresh set of eyes. And so having that public interest and having these citizen detectives that want to take the time to go through all of these documents and watch these videos and try to piece this together that can have some impact. And again, if they’re able to generate leads and find information, that’s fantastic for the investigation. There’s a lot of positive as well. 

Kate Young: So it all comes back to the education, the empathy, the advocacy that you center your work around for your students too. Why is that more effective when it comes to solving cases and helping victims’ families? 

Krystal Hans: My intention with that, again, is to make my students understand that in the real world, there are a lot of people that are impacted by these crimes. And in the symposium, we have law enforcement that speaks about how these cases impact them and what the emotional weight of this work is. And I think when the students experience that, they know that what they’re doing in the classroom is having an impact in the real world that somebody outside of the instructor who’s grading their material, these families are going to get access to this. I think it makes them more committed to the work. They understand that what they’re doing in the classroom goes beyond the class, goes beyond Purdue, and is going out into the world and is going to affect somebody. And so I think it makes them more dedicated researchers. I think it makes them more empathetic humans. That’s my goal is just to make sure that they understand the human element of this work. 

Kate Young: For those who can’t take your class, our listeners, our viewers, what are some practical ways that the public can practice empathy and ethical advocacy? 

Krystal Hans: I think it starts by the true crime content that you consume, do a little bit of research into the background of the podcasters. If you hear something where there’s crude jokes that are made about the victim, offhanded comments, don’t continue to consume that content if they’re disrespectful to the victims and to the families. And some of the docuseries that are made, they don’t get consent from the families to be able to share that. And so I think just being intentional with what we’re consuming is a great way to start. I think if you’re interested in really sharing, social media is so powerful. So if you see a poster about somebody who’s missing or an unresolved case, it takes two seconds for you to share that poster on social media, share it on your platforms because you never know who will get access to that, that might know information that can lead to a tip or a new lead. Something so simple as just sharing on social media does a lot to help that case, and again, to highlight to the families that somebody is thinking of your loved one. 

Kate Young: Any empathetic or ethical true-crime books, podcasts, content that you recommend to anyone out there that really want to dig into this? 

Krystal Hans: Oh, I have to say, I think one of the most well-produced and kind of forensically sound podcasts that I’ve listened to is Bear Brook. It’s about a case in Bear Brook State Park in New Hampshire, I believe. And there was a big 55 gallon drum that was found that had two sets of remains in it, and then 15 years later, another one that’s found in the same park. And so through the podcast, they’re able to explain the forensic science side of that, how to identify these individuals, how to determine that they were related. So it was a woman and three children and kind of piece together the science and also all of the people that were involved. And for that case, there was resolution. They were able to identify the perpetrator that had committed those crimes. And I just think that that podcast does a great job at the storytelling element, but also being respectful and really showcasing the science behind it. 

Kate Young: Well, I could keep you here all day, I won’t do that. Is there anything else that I missed that you want to share with our audience? 

Krystal Hans: I would say if there’s anybody that’s in the Lafayette or Indiana area that’s interested in attending our symposium, it is open to everybody. You do not have to be a student. You do not have to be in the forensics community. We want to get as many community members involved. And so as soon as we have those dates and advertisements, I’ll be sharing that. It’s open to anyone and we’d encourage you if this is something that you want to learn more about and you want to find a way that you can contribute, then please come to our symposium. 

Kate Young: We’ll link that in our show notes for our listeners too. 

Krystal Hans: Thank you. 

Kate Young: Well, Krystal, it was a total pleasure. Thank you so much. 

Krystal Hans: Oh, thanks for having me. 

Kate Young: Krystal is such an interesting person and a wonderful hands-on professor, it’s no surprise that her forensic investigation class continues to grow year after year. We linked more information about Project: Cold Case in our show notes for you, so be sure to check that out if you’re interested. And if you want to watch our full video interview with Krystal in our podcast studio, head over to youtube.com/thisispurdue and hit that subscribe button while you’re there. Plus, be sure to follow This is Purdue on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you love this episode, leave us a review. We’d love to hear your feedback. 

This is Purdue is hosted and written by me, Kate Young. Our podcast videography for this episode was led by Thad Boone in collaboration with Jon Garcia, Zach Mogensen, and Alli Chaney. Our social media marketing is led by Maria Welch. Our podcast design is led by Cheryl Glotzbach. Our podcast photography is led by John Underwood. Our podcast team project manager is Rain Gu. Our podcast YouTube promotions is managed by Megan Hoskins. Additional writing and research assistance is led by Ashvini Malshe, and our creative production manager is Dalani Young. 

Thanks for listening to This Is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcast. From there, you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. And don’t forget, you can also check out all of our podcast content on our podcast YouTube page, youTube.com/@thisispurdue. And as always, Boiler Up!

Kate Young: 

Hi, I’m Kate Young and you’re listening to This Is Purdue, the official podcast for Purdue University. As a Purdue alum and Indiana native, I know firsthand about the family of students and professors who are in it together, persistently pursuing and relentlessly rethinking. Who are the next game changers, difference makers, ceiling breakers, innovators? Who are these boilermakers? Join me as we feature students, faculty, and alumni taking small steps toward their giant leaps and inspiring others to do the same. 

Hi everyone. I’m Kate Young. Thanks for tuning in. I’m a proud boilermaker alumna and host of This Is Purdue. We’re coming to you live from the Indianapolis International Airport today where thousands of people across the country are coming in for the NCAA Men’s Final Four. I have two wonderful guests with me today. We have Ken Halpin and Julie Roe Lach. Thank you so much for joining me today. 

We are going to talk all about how Indy is the place to host these amazing sports events. So first, Julie, thank you so much for joining us. 

Julie Roe Lach: 

Thank you. It’s good to be here. 

Kate Young: 

So you are the executive vice president of external relations and community engagement for Pacers Sports & Entertainment. You’ve worked in college athletics for over 25 years, so we’re excited to get your take on everything about how the Final Four impacts student athletes, the local community, sports fans. 

And then Ken, I know you from Purdue. Thank you for joining us. 

Ken Halpin: 

Yeah, it’s great to be here. 

Kate Young: 

So you get to experience Purdue’s unique culture firsthand every day. We’re going to talk about our basketball program. We’ve had so many record-breaking things happen, so we’re going to get into that. I got my Fletcher Lawyer shirt here. 

So let’s kick it off. This is an exciting moment for us here in Indiana. Julie, what does this Final Four mean to us as a city? 

Julie Roe Lach: 

I mean, it’s incredible. You can feel the buzz here. So this is the ninth Final Four on the men’s side for our city. And just even looking at the numbers. So we hosted all of March Madness in 2021, but it was under the pandemic, right? So when we look at the economic impact going back to 2015, it was like 70 million or so. 

This year they’re projecting $400 million in economic impact. That alone is significant. But I think more importantly, these mega events are unifiers. We now have engaged the arts scene and there’s an entire effort called SWISH where we’ve got a lot of performances happening. And the point is, I think the NCAA, the Sports Corp, all of our partners have done a great job of making available free opportunities, whether it’s the fan fest or the concerts. My kids were talking last night about who the concert lineup is because they couldn’t believe that you can see these three big acts all in one day or two days. So it is such a fun time and a unifying time for our city. 

Kate Young: 

Ken, you know Indy is home to our Purdue’s urban campus. What do you think this means for college basketball fans overall? 

Ken Halpin: 

Well, being close to Indianapolis for Purdue and for the importance and the success historically of our athletic department, access to Indianapolis is immense. Simply because Indianapolis, I don’t know of a city that takes more seriously the commitment to using sport to drive economic impact. And to be frank, right now, Indianapolis, I don’t think anybody can argue that you guys … This city is the leader in advancing economic impact through women’s sport. And so our access to Indy, we always make sure from a basketball standpoint, we’re playing a non-conference game in Indianapolis every single year. 

For our booster club, the John Purdue club, over 5,000 of our members live in the greater Indianapolis area. And then just from a university standpoint, obviously the collaboration we have across campus, members of your team and utilizing the airport as a place to remind … Because if you grew up in the Midwest or you love college sports, you know where Purdue is. But if you grew up in the South, if you grew up on the West Coast, because the name Indiana is not in the university’s name, you’ve got to have a way that you understand something exists. 

And so the Final Fours, all of the sporting events that Indianapolis hosts, it makes it a great place for our students. Not just our student athletes, but our entire student body to have a great collegiate experience with access, not just to an urban environment, but to real professional opportunities. 

And then I would say too, being innovative as a city, not tied to my day job, but two of my favorite things that Purdue does, we educate pilots. And so being tied to the airport is a big deal for our university. And then motorsports engineering … And I would say sports engineering, Purdue is taking the first step in those areas. So our tie to the Indy Motor Speedway and pursuing what I would call non-traditional sport compared to what young kids normally look at. Because it’s young people today that are our future students and our future, future alums. All of that wouldn’t be possible without the city of Indianapolis and the way they exist. 

Kate Young: 

Absolutely. And we’re looking forward to the Indy 500 coming up in May. 

Ken Halpin: 

Absolutely. 

Kate Young: 

Okay. So let’s dig into Purdue basketball. There’s just a high bar for national excellence. This was our third consecutive year playing in the Sweet 16, Coach Painter’s third trip to the Elite Eight. Coach Painter’s 500th win. Braden Smith broke the NCAA all time career assist record. We have our amazing seniors, Fletcher Lawyer, TKR, Braden, they set the record for the most wins for a senior class in Purdue history. Why are these successes so unique, especially when it’s this modern day NIL? We have this unique loyalty factor here at Purdue. 

Ken Halpin: 

Yeah. And I do, on Fletch’s behalf, I have to add for a school that so famously had so many three point shooters for being the best three point shooter in school history. It’s been special because I do, one of the best parts of my job is I get an up close look at everything our basketball program does. And I was just talking to one of my colleagues yesterday about this. 68 teams get to play in the NCAA tournament every year. And 67 of them all are going to end their season on a loss. 

And so you have this incredible high immediately tied to a low and you don’t know when it’s coming. And it took Trey’s Tip-In at the end of the Texas game to get to the Elite Eight. It’s special to be a part of, and it’s an emotional rollercoaster that professionally is not always easy. We talk all the time, like being emotionally invested in something that’s tied to your career, makes it really difficult to roll and cope with. 

But at the same time, we’re in the biggest basketball state in the country. So basketball is every … I mean, our other sports matter. I mean, we just hosted two nights ago, a fundraiser for our volleyball program and Dave Shondell, 22 years as a head coach at Purdue, just got to the Elite Eight in one of the fastest growing women’s sports in the country. A few years ago, you couldn’t dream that collegiate volleyball players would dream about professional volleyball. That’s a real thing now. And that’s a big part of the city of Indianapolis. 

But it’s special to be a part of. But also our staff, you won’t find better human beings in the country than our staff, as our people here know. But because Indy is what it is and because of the nine Final Fours, right, the 10th one is going to be … So one of our incoming recruits, Luke Ertel’s a Mount Vernon High kid who’s going to come to Purdue. When he’s a junior, the final four will be in Indy again. 

So there’s always the future. There’s always the opportunity for, what’s the next level of talent? And what’s really special about Purdue is we take growth systematically. We take that concept very … It’s very important to us. So that every step forward we take is when we know we’re not going to lose the next year. We’re going to be different next year, but we’re not going to be taking a step back. There’s a new normal and a new standard of excellence that keeps growing under Coach Painter’s leadership and it’s fun to be a part of. 

Kate Young: 

We’re sad to see them go, but what do you think the future holds for Braden, Fletcher, Trey? 

Ken Halpin: 

Well, I think all three of them are going to have professional opportunities. They’re all very different. They’re just such interesting human beings. Trey is so thoughtful and so introspective. And when he gets a week off, I think he’d probably rather go hiking in the woods than anything else. But he’s a monster who can still make a lot of money playing basketball. 

Fletch can shoot anywhere, any team he can be on. I think Fletcher, from a mindset standpoint … I don’t know if he wants to do this or not. He’s very much built to be a coach someday. He’s intellectually one of the smartest minds I know coach would say he’s ever had on his team. 

And then obviously Braden has positioned himself to show that he can set anybody in the world up to score on a basketball court. And so his hopes are going to obviously be in the NBA, but he’s got a bright future ahead of him no matter what. Just because of his work ethic and his tenaciousness and his desire to overachieve. 

So it’s a special group that we’re going to miss for a long time. But that goes with every … I mean, we’ve got stories about guys on our roster that aren’t as in the news from a fan standpoint. But still the character integrity and work ethic of our entire roster, it’s something special to be around professionally. I joke with people, if you’ve ever met anyone in your entire life who’s ever been associated with Purdue basketball, you know immediately they’re not a jerk. Because it’s not tolerated, it’s not welcome. The way they treat human beings is second to none, and it’s the best part about being around guys like Braden, Trey and Fletch. 

Kate Young: 

We had coach P.J. Thompson on the podcast and he had echoes exactly what you just said. So I would encourage our listeners and viewers to check that episode out as well. 

But Julie, I want to dig more into what this cultural moment means for the city. You said we can feel the buzz here. What does a national event like this mean to the Indianapolis community? 

Julie Roe Lach: 

Well, beyond like you just think about the exposure and the millions of people tuning in to watch. But now through all these social channels like the Purdue podcast, I think it just shines such a spotlight on what really is the epicenter of sport. I mean, Ken said it, the Sports Corp, I just finished as chair of the board. We launched a 2050 vision for our city and state to be the epicenter of sport. And then we’ve got five key pillars. And one of those is to be the capital of women’s sports and we’re well on our way. We just frankly need to quit being so humble about it and be bold and explain why we can claim that. 

But part of that is hosting these mega events and building this ecosystem where it’s not just the event. There’s this whole spectrum of other opportunities happening. So the idea currently that I’m seeing really unfold, just it’s incredible, it’s called SWISH. So you have over 175 artists who might have thought, “How would I ever be connected with the Final Four?” Well, it’s a takeover of downtown Indy, whether it’s the spoken ward, they’re painting murals, there’s musical performances that’s inside The Stutz arts building. And then it’s just a takeover of Capitol Street and Georgia, to say, “Hey, yes, of course, basketball is the dominant reason why we’re all here.” And on top of that, we want to celebrate the cultural aspect around sport to frankly just make it inclusive. And then of course, you’ve got the musical acts and the fan fest where you can go in and take your shot with any green screen that you want. 

But I think that’s where our city really comes to life is recognizing … I just keep going back to the word unifying. And just to take liberty to Ken’s point earlier, to go back to Purdue and play to the audience here. But as a longtime fan of Purdue, but someone that worked in college sports for 25 years, I can say hands down, Ken is absolutely right. The people … First of all, I’ve seen Coach Painter and NCA committees that I served on where he was in the same room. And he approaches committee work just as tenacious and shows up with integrity and on time and all the things you would expect of a true leader in that setting, as you see him whenever all the lights are on and he’s coaching in an Elite Eight game. 

And to me, that’s who he is and you see that through his team with two teenagers who are diehard fans of Purdue basketball, it’s because those guys are role models. And because they’ve seen them off the court and they see who they are and it’s the same person on the court. Of course, they want to win. But I think there is a unique character that starts at the top with the board and the president, with Mike and Ken and the athletics department, and then of course, the coaching staff. And it is special in this collegiate landscape. 

Kate Young: 

Absolutely. I love that. You’re both leaders in your fields, you’ve seen firsthand house sports connect people. You said you have teenagers who are Purdue fans. And sports connect people across all generations. And you’ve touched on basketball means so much to this state in particular. What are some ways that you’ve seen sports strengthen your communities? Ken, we can start with you. 

Ken Halpin: 

Yeah. I mean, well, just the fact that Julia and I are sitting here next to each other is a prime example. 

So in light of just the drive of sport in Indianapolis through the direction of Dr. Jeanne Boyd, Purdue has recently launched a sport management program. So the academic approach to preparing future leaders in sport is here and arrived. And that’s in addition to motor sports engineering and sports engineering and all the various ways that Purdue is applying sport from an academic standpoint. 

And then frankly, the folks, just all of leadership, including Julie with Pacer Sports & Entertainment, and everything from a leadership standpoint at Purdue, there are almost too many ideas of ways that we can collaborate with the campus we have in Indy and the ideas. And to echo in return, the character and integrity and the desire for people who work for the ports … For Mel and Frank and everyone and Joey at the Pacers. The desire to see this city grow in relevance long beyond our lifetime, to do things that set up the children of our children to be successful and find sport as a connector throughout the state of Indiana, to be frank. But starting from the city of Indianapolis, there are a lot of things that are still an ideas state that need development and need growth. But they’re going to happen because there’s just way too much opportunity. 

The city of Indianapolis, I think you said it perfectly earlier, everything happens here needs to be bragged about a little bit more. Because it’s real what’s happening. 

Kate Young: 

We’re humble Midwest people. 

Ken Halpin: 

That’s a thousand percent right. 

Julie Roe Lach: 

Yeah. I think I would add to that … And now I’ve seen it in the college space and I have the privilege of seeing the Pacers and Fever and this global platform that they have. It’s about opportunity and access relative to the community. And there’s an entire charitable arm with the Pacers and the Fever from addressing food insecurity to homelessness. And those are initiatives that we are passionate about. 

And then there’s the opportunity of careers and partnerships to really be innovative and frankly set our city up, as Ken said, for what’s next. The longtime vice chairman at the Pacers who passed a couple years ago and his spirit lives on, his name’s Jim Morris. He’s obviously really, I think, a founding father, as many would say, of our city, especially the sports strategy. He’s the reason I’m here and so many people relocated from Kansas City to Indianapolis when the NCAA headquarters moved here. And that’s why we’ve had so many Final Fours. But he used to always say, “See every opportunity in its largest possible context.” And I think that’s what we are doing with sport. Yes, we love the sheer competition and the spirit that comes with it. But the largest possible context and opportunity here is about how do we bring people together and then move forward collectively. 

Kate Young: 

Julie, I’m sure you’ll be out and about downtown Indie all weekend. What are you most looking forward to? 

Julie Roe Lach: 

Well, I am looking forward to the games, even though my team Purdue is not going to be playing. 

Ken Halpin: 

Speak for yourself. 

Julie Roe Lach: 

Yeah. I might have somebody in my house rooting against Arizona, even though I said, “Hey guys, it’s okay. We can move past.” Because I worked in college sports for so long, this is a little bit like a homecoming. Because the Final Four is such a gathering point. So there’s an ESPN party tonight, Pacer Sports Entertainment is hosting an event tomorrow. We’ve got the NIT championship and the division two and three championships at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on Sunday. Which by the way, no city has claimed four national champions in a 36-hour time period. But we’re getting ready to do that here in Indianapolis over the next couple of days. So frankly, it’s the people. I’m looking forward to just seeing all of the great people like Ken that work in sports, all come to our home. 

Kate Young: 

Ken, any predictions for this weekend from your sports angle? 

Ken Halpin: 

I predict that I will not be down here. 

Julie Roe Lach: 

He was invited, by the way. 

Ken Halpin: 

Yes, I was. It’s hard. I’ve always been a big fan of college basketball in general and always been … You get to attend when you work in college athletics, Final Fours, and see people you haven’t seen in forever. When you’re on the inside and you aspire to participate in it, it makes it really difficult to still engage in those things when … We all believe we should be here and so … And that’ll never change. And that’s why I love being at Purdue. Final four is our expectation and it doesn’t feel right to not be there. 

But there are some really, really talented, big, fast basketball teams playing this year. 

Kate Young: 

Yes. 

Ken Halpin: 

I think bigger and faster than I can remember seeing in a long time. So I don’t know. I root for people that do good things. Obviously, Big Ten doing well is always great for us. But Tommy Lloyd … I have a graduate degree from Gonzaga University. Tommy Lloyd went to Arizona from Gonzaga, so I wouldn’t mind seeing him do really well. But outside of that, I’m going to watch some youth soccer on Saturday and Sunday. 

Kate Young: 

Good for you. I plan to be downtown. I can’t wait. I love events like this. I might go to the three point contest at Hinkle tonight. 

Ken Halpin: 

Yes, wear that t-shirt. 

Kate Young: 

I absolutely will. 

Well, thank you guys so much for joining us. It was an absolute pleasure. So exciting to be here before this action-packed weekend. So thank you. Anything I missed? Anything you want to tell the listeners, viewers? 

Julie Roe Lach: 

I’d just say come on downtown. There’s literally something for everyone and so much of it is free. And that, what I think, is really spectacular. We want this to be a community and frankly, a citywide event. So come on downtown. 

Ken Halpin: 

I’ll put a shameless Purdue plug in real quick. I know one of the questions that were thrown out is like … And I’d be curious your answer to this, future events you might want to see come here. So I have an answer and I know you know what it is. And it’s not exactly to Indy, but it’s utilizing Indy. What I think we, at Purdue, need to continue doing a better job of helping people understand is we don’t have one, we have two world-class golf courses right on our campus. I mentioned earlier, we train pilots, which means we have an airport on campus. And just a year ago, we opened a $40 million golf clubhouse. And so what we would love to see come through Indiana via Purdue someday is potential major golf events. 

We’ve had discussions about LPGA, we want to earn PGA events. Those are the types of opportunities we think … We get to dream outside the box and stuff like that throughout the state of Indiana because of these partnerships. It’s also a great way to remind people what a hidden gem we have from a golf standpoint up in West Lafayette. 

Kate Young: 

PGA golfer, Adam Schenk. Also, This is Purdue podcast guest. 

Ken Halpin: 

The other fun part of the LPGA idea is you have a PGA event, you can have the Pro-am where any local pros who are interested in playing. And from my understanding, there’s only one fever player who’s really, really, really good at golf and it’d be the one everybody would want to see attend their event. 

Julie Roe Lach: 

I really like the idea now. 

Ken Halpin: 

Thought you might. 

Julie Roe Lach: 

Yes. 

Kate Young: 

What about you, Julie? What’s another event that Indy could land that you would want to see? 

Julie Roe Lach: 

Well, I think … I mean, first of all, Ken alluded to it earlier, but the fact that we have three Final Fours over the next four years has never happened. So the men’s this year, the women’s in 2028, and then the men’s in ’29. In 2028, we’re also going to build two more pools in Lucas Oil Stadium and host the USA Swim Trials again. I would love for us to continue on that global trajectory, meaning the Olympics, in terms of hosting a national team. Whether it’s USA Gymnastics trials, which we’ve been able to secure their headquarters here or bring a USA track and field finals here, to really then see our Olympians off to go represent our country on the global stage. I think that’s … Of course, I’m all for the LPGA. But I think that continuing to push us globally is where we need to be. 

Kate Young: 

Those swim trials, was that two summers ago, last summer? 

Julie Roe Lach: 

It was 2024. 

Kate Young: 

That was so fun downtown too. That was a blast. 

Julie Roe Lach: 

Coming back. 

Ken Halpin: 

Just building pools inside football stadiums is a wild concept that I’m just fascinated with. 

Julie Roe Lach: 

Only in Indy. 

Ken Halpin: 

Correct. 

Julie Roe Lach: 

First time ever. 

Kate Young: 

There were boilermakers involved in that, if I remember correctly. 

Julie Roe Lach: 

Had to have been, right? That’s an engineering feat. 

Kate Young: 

So thank you again. It was a pleasure. Everyone subscribe to This is Purdue on Apple, Spotify, YouTube. We’re not done with our spring season yet, so be sure to tune in. Remember, in 49 other states, it’s just basketball. But this is Indiana, so boiler up. Thanks everyone. 

Thanks for listening to This Is Purdue. For more information on this episode, visit our website at purdue.edu/podcast. There, you can head over to your favorite podcast app to subscribe and leave us a review. And as always, boiler up.