Welcome to the 2025 Indiana 250 list, a project we started working on in late January and tweaked until just a couple of weeks before we sent the book to the printer.
Before I explain the process for creating the book, I want to thank our seven cover models: Indianapolis Colts Vice Chair and co-owner Kalen Jackson; IndyCar and Indianapolis Motor Speedway President Doug Boles; Hc1 founder, Chair and CEO Bradley Bostic; Lucas Oil Products President Katie Lucas; Thompson Distribution Co. founder and President John Thompson; Keystone Group founder and owner Ersal Ozdemir; and Indiana University Maurer School of Law Dean and Herman B Wells Professor Christiana Ochoa.
These vibrant business and community leaders spent a June morning at the InterContinental Hotel, which Ozdemir’s Keystone Group opened in February, letting us pose them, repose them, straighten their ties, prod them a little this way and push them a little that way until we got a photo we loved. We appreciate their time away from very busy schedules to help us with one of our favorite parts of the process!
Work on the list, of course, was nearly done when we got together for that photo shoot. Every year, the Indiana 250 development starts with the difficult task of looking over the previous year’s list and making decisions about who will stay on the list and whom we can let go to make room for new names.
It’s so difficult. Our state and the communities across Indiana are led and molded by far more than 250 people. But because we always want to highlight up-and-coming leaders in addition to our longtime community stalwarts, we have to make room for new names.
We find those new people in multiple ways, including nominations from readers, recommendations from other leaders and those who’ve been on the list before, and suggestions from our newsrooms. There’s tremendous internal debate about whom to include—discussions that can last weeks or even months.
The goal is to turn over about a third of the list, something we didn’t quite accomplish this year. But we have more than 60 new names representing law firms, real estate, hospitality, sports, manufacturing, transportation, education, nonprofits, government and more.
The list is divided into 10 categories—and we hope you give us some grace for the way in which we categorized people. A surprising number of leaders would fit in multiple categories. There are attorneys who work for manufacturers. CEOs of companies that manufacture agricultural or tech products. Leaders of nonprofits that provide health care. And so on.
Therefore, we’ve given you several ways to navigate the book. You’ll find a table of contents that lists the pages for the categories. Then, at the start of each of those categories, you’ll find another table of contents listing the names of the leaders in that section.
At the beginning of the book, you’ll find the complete Indiana 250 list in alphabetical order. And you can go to Indiana250.com and do a search.
Throughout the book, you’ll find a profile for each leader on the list. The profiles are based on our own research and information we collected from the leaders through a questionnaire. We appreciate that so many of the people who responded provided answers to questions about their leadership style, what they would do as governor, the song they’d want played if they were walking up to bat in a baseball game, and about their concerns for central Indiana.
Some individuals on the list did not submit information. In those cases, the profiles are based on our own team’s research.
And speaking of that team, we have many people to thank for making this publication a reality. In particular, IBJ Managing Editor Samm Quinn, Lead Designer Audrey Pelsor, Production Coordinator Julie Kirkendoll, Editorial Graphic Designer Sarah Ellis and copy editor Ann Finch contributed many hours to this endeavor. Several other reporters, designers and editors also played key roles in writing profiles or laying out the book. We could not have finished the Indiana 250 publication without all of them.
So with that, enjoy the profiles and let us know whom you think we missed. We promise to add the names to a list for consideration in 2026.
Lesley Weidenbener, editor
Indiana 250
Indianapolis Business Journal