This year’s Technology Association of Iowa’s Catalysts Live, held on July 17, focused on telling stories of innovation for all Iowans.
“At its core, Catalysts Live was about possibility,” said Brian Waller, president of TAI. “It’s about stories that remind us what’s possible when innovation is made accessible to all, when people are empowered, they’re invited in a given space to thrive. … It’s a call to action. It’s a reminder that innovation doesn’t just happen in board rooms or labs. It happens in classrooms. It happens in communities. It happens in conversations like the ones you’re going to have here today.”
The event featured five stories of innovation across Iowa.
“Today’s honorees are leading by example, expanding what’s possible and opening doors for others,” said TAI board chair Jason Katcher. “Their stories are a glimpse into a more inclusive, more innovative future for Iowa.”
‘We underestimated everybody’
Mindy Burr is the director of vocational programs at Easterseals Iowa, which provides services and support to people with disabilities and their families.
Burr highlighted a partnership Easterseals Iowa has with Athene, a retirement services company. She said the company reached out to Easterseals Iowa a couple of years ago, saying it wanted to do better and diversify its workforce.
They met for several months and created a program called Athene@Work, that connects Easterseals clients with jobs at Athene.
Today, 16 out of 22 participants that were hired at Athene are still working there.
“They’re super thankful for their partnership,” she said. “The best part about the story – we underestimated everybody.”
Easterseals originally identified two different positions that would align well with this program – post-issue processing and an IT position, she said.
“They started working and they’re like guess what? They can do more. We need to create other positions. We need to add to their caseload.”
Athene extended additional job opportunities to bring more people into the program, she said.
Her call to action was to get involved.
“Reach out to Easterseals,” she said. “Start your journey with another person with disabilities.”
Iowa’s great at ‘warmth and connection’
Paul H. Richardson Jr., founder and CEO of Tumbleweed, an Iowa startup that supports people with aging, end-of-life and post-loss, said the seed for his idea was planted on a road trip to Iowa in 2022.
He said he had six loved ones pass away in six years and he pondered how he navigated through their aging, making decisions on hospice and nursing homes, and handling their affairs when they passed away.
He asked himself a series of questions on the road trip. “How in the world are people managing all of this? What do they do? How [are they] not working [with] technology [to] support people through the process?’”
It’s estimated today that 1 in 5 adults are caring for an aging person and by 2040, it’s going to be 1 in 3, Richardson said. There are an estimated 330,000 family caregivers in Iowa, he said.
Tumbleweed took root in Iowa, at a Techstars Startup weekend in Iowa City.
“One of the unique things that I think Iowa does a really great job, whether it’s ecosystem builders or just the general population, is warmth and connection,” he said.
“It’s not, ‘Oh my gosh, you should go talk to Bill. Bill’s fantastic. Bill has all the information you need.’ It’s, ‘Hey, Bill and I are going to be at this event on Thursday. Can you come and then I’m going to walk you over to Bill and make that introduction actually happen and tee you up so that introduction actually turns into a deeper conversation.’”
Invest in a space to spur ideas
Rose Hedges, nursing research and innovation program manager at UnityPoint Health-Cedar Rapids, said the hospital recently invested in a maker’s space right by the coffee shop.
“Inside a hospital, people every day are solving challenges right at the point of care,” she said. “How can we provide a space for our people and our clinicians, our patients, anyone inside the hospital, how can we provide a space where they can come and help create the solutions to the challenges that they have?”
In the maker’s space, the hospital has electronics, laser cutters, mini printers, resins and silicone, “you name it,” Hedges said.
Hedges, who is also a nurse, said she gets to work “alongside engineering,” and together they help people make connections and find solutions to problems.
“It was born out of the idea of how can I help people be engaged in their work, retain them?” she said. “I wanted to help support nurses, and being a nurse, to be engaged in their work, keep them at the bedside, to help them do the work that they wanted to be able to do.”
One of the fixes they created was for a patient in rehabilitation who needed support lifting her baby. So she could train to lift and put down her baby, her therapist taped ankle weights to a home baby doll.
Another patient, 15, was injured in a skiing accident. She had good gross motor skills but was not able to type on a keyboard, Hedges said. However, her joy was playing video games on a laptop.
Her occupational therapist and an engineer came up with a custom keyboard. She was happy again and practicing her fine motor skills, Hedges said.
“It was all because we had a space where they could come and talk about their ideas together,” she said. “I want to inspire you all to invest in the time, to provide the space, whether it’s a physical space or a virtual space, to allow people to bring their ideas.”
‘Immigrants are a critical community’ to Iowa
Kailey Blazek Naranjo, shareholder at Dentons Davis Brown, works with individuals, as well as employers, that are sponsoring foreign nationals for legal work status in the U.S.
She urged attendees that are seeing workforce gaps they’re not able to cover, or if they’ve tried sponsoring people and encountered barriers, to speak to legislators and policy makers.
“Address what those issues are that you’re seeing and speak out against that so we can have a more streamlined process to be able to recruit and retain that critical talent,” she said. “Immigrants are a critical community and population to the state of Iowa, specifically contributing to population growth, the economy and GDP.”
Citing data from the Common Sense Institute, a nonpartisan research organization, Blazek Naranjo said Iowa’s birth rate at 1.7% falls below the replacement rate of 2.1%.
“The state is also consistently seeing what’s referred to as net negative migration,” she said. “So what that means is that more people are leaving the state of Iowa every year than are entering the state. Over time, we have seen that gap decrease a little bit.”
Iowa is also seeing “significant populations” in the age range of 18 to 30 that are leaving the state, as well as those that are college educated, she said.
“Those with college degrees are leaving Iowa at twice the rate than those without,” she said. “That’s sometimes referred to as the brain drain.”
Baby boomers are retiring or leaving the workforce, which is creating additional skill and labor gaps, she said.
“So with all these factors at play, really, in order to maintain the state’s economic growth, to say it plainly, we need more people in the state, whether that is going to be through domestic or foreign migration.”
In 2021, had Iowa not relied on foreign migration or foreign nationals coming into the state, the population would have actually declined, she said.
Since 2021, Iowa’s population has increased 1.34% or about 60% more than it would have without immigration, she said.
“Our growth would have been significantly less had we not had that critical population,” she said.
If immigration halted completely in Iowa for the next four years, the result would be a labor force loss of about 11,000 workers and $300 million in GDP, she said.
‘The magic happens when the pressure is off’
Hundreds of women showed up last year to the three Women in Tech Happy Hour events, said Kate Lyon, general counsel at OpenLoop Health.
She said she and others launched this event series so women could show up exactly as they are.
The event series launched after Lyon said she spoke with some friends and colleagues and realized “we go to a lot of events similar to this and we were sometimes the only women in the room, or if we were there, we weren’t really connecting with anyone,” she said.
“And we thought we needed more than just networking. We need real conversation. We need to be able to say to the person that we’re talking to, ‘Wait a second, you’re doing that work too.’ Or, ‘I’m not the only one who feels that way every day when I show up.’”
The organizers discovered that “the magic happens when the pressure is off,” said Liz Keehner, principal, Next Level Ventures.
“Because when no one is asking for a resume or pitching a product, people talk about what really matters. They open up about imposter syndrome. They ask real questions like, “How do I speak up in a meeting more? How did you know you were ready to leave?’”
And then organizers saw a shift, she said. Women who came in quiet at the beginning were the ones recruiting others for the next event.
“Finally, let’s challenge a common misconception that technology is only for certain people in certain roles at certain organizations,” Keehner said. “The truth is, technology does not care about titles, departments or industry. It does not recognize gender, background or job description.”
These events were not just for coders, Keehner said. They brought together marketing managers, human resources leaders, product designers, data analysts and entrepreneurs.
“It was a desire to understand how technology is changing our future and how we can adapt and grow alongside it and support others in learning across boundaries by building cross-functional, cross-industry relationships,” she said. “We all walked away with broader perspectives and better questions. When women come together, we don’t just build community, we spark courage, we amplify voices and we prove that when we show up for one another, there is no limit to what we can achieve.”