Matthew Fajt ’21 LABB Intern– This week, LABB had the opportunity to step out of Crawfordsville and travel to South Bend and Indianapolis to learn the ins and outs of enFocus, Archon Tech Strategies, and Triton Brewery. In South Bend, we learned about enFocus’s impact on the community through the insights of Executive Director Andrew Wiand and Program Director Pat Jones ’15. They talked to us about enfocus’s mission to build a better community through research, consulting, and innovation. They were joined by enFocus fellows and interns (current Wabash students) to speak on behalf of their own projects and experiences. After an insightful Q&A, we received a tour of the new building in which enFocus was operating as well as the old Studebaker facility.
On Friday, we took a visit to Platform 24 and Archon Tech Strategies in Carmel, Indiana to meet with Tony Unfried ’03. Tony is the President of Platform 24, a co-working space, as well as the Indianapolis Association of Wabash Men (IAWM)
. In addition, Tony is the CEO of Archon Tech Strategies, a business development service. He talked about his experiences and failures after Wabash, emphasizing the importance of marketing research prior to launching a product.
That afternoon, we headed to the east side of Indianapolis to visit David Waldman ‘93, co-founder of Triton Brewing Company. David told his backstory on how he founded the brewery and explained how his liberal arts degree helped him in his career. He then gave us a tour of the Triton, demonstrating to us each step in the making of the product. We learned that David’s philosophy was to place the majority of efforts into the water, because 95% of beer is water. Following the tour, we had the opportunity to try his root beer (because we are not of age), and I must say it was delicious! The main thing that I took away from the visit is that a major does not define your career. Rather, a liberal arts education opens the door for several careers.
