About Us

Bill Kalivas and Allen Battle, Co-Founders of LaunchPad, actively involved in the community for over 30 years.

Bill and Allen have built an impressive team to bring LaunchPad back!

In May 2022, Bill and Allen announced the return of LaunchPad.

Blending feedback with innovation, mentoring, coaching, inspiration and fun to create something special for our region!

LaunchPad INW is a professional services organization committed to

Leading a regional, collaborative initiative to strengthen our regional innovation ecosystem
Deliver inclusive programs and events that connect, mentor and inspire people and companies to achieve greater success

Addressing Regional Challenges

We met with local businesses, community leaders, universities, economic development organizations and hosted several events to better understand key business challenges people and businesses are facing in our region.

The most common challenges we heard included (2) key areas:

Our regional innovation ecosystem has improved but continues to have significant gaps with no one organization leading a regional, collaborative effort to connect and fill these gaps.

Having a robust innovation economy leads to:

A stronger regional brand around innovation
Higher wage jobs
High growth industries leveraging our assets including Clean Energy, Bioscience and Cybersecurity
Economic multipliers
A magnet for advanced research, recruiting and retaining talent, and visionary investment

People, companies and organizations need:

Connections and coaching for how to network effectively and developing professional relationships
Mentoring
Coaching, especially for emerging leaders
To be Inspired