When you ask employers across Greater Lafayette how the region keeps producing talent for advanced manufacturing, healthcare, chemicals, logistics, and (increasingly) semiconductors, one name surfaces again and again: Kara Webb.
Today, Kara serves as Director of Workforce Development at Greater Lafayette Commerce. Her remit is deceptively simple: pull employers, schools, higher ed, and workforce partners to the same table—and keep the table set until students are exploring careers, building skills, earning credentials, and getting hired.
In practice, that means relentless coordination, a bias for practical solutions, and an eye on outcomes that matter to both students and employers.
This is her story—and the regional playbook she helped create.
From unemployment line to workforce leader
Kara didn’t plan a career in workforce development. A layoff from an insurance company led her to the local WorkOne office to file for unemployment, where a chance encounter turned into a job interview and a temporary role with the state.
Within months, she was full-time—first as an Employment Specialist helping newly laid-off workers assess interests, find openings, and upskill, then as an Employer Specialist, and ultimately as the person who stood up a high-volume testing center when Subaru of Indiana Automotive needed to assess more than 5,000 candidates during a major hiring wave.
That front-row view of both sides of the labor market—jobseekers and employers—shaped Kara’s philosophy: talent pipelines work only when the right people are in the room and when training matches what the job truly demands.
Why Greater Lafayette Commerce?
Kara joined Greater Lafayette Commerce to gain the flexibility to build regional talent pipelines instead of filling requisitions one employer at a time.
“Here, I can think about unique ways to build a talent pipeline,” she says—ways that start in K–12, continue through higher ed, and land in durable local careers.”
A few early proof points:
- Manufacturing Week matured from tours into a year-round service model that now includes K–5 discovery workshops, a grades 6–8 expo, and high school facility tours—offered in both face to facel opportunities and digital formats via Career+ Pathways™.
- Those virtual experiences now live inside a single data system that tracks chats, tours, coaching, micro-credentials, and work-based learning (WBL) across the region—so schools, employers, and workforce partners operate from the same playbook.
The Coalition Kara Built — and Greater Lafayette Commerce Leads
Under Kara Webb’s leadership at Greater Lafayette Commerce, the region’s workforce strategy has transformed from disconnected programs into a cohesive, employer-driven ecosystem.
Kara envisioned and built a regional framework where employers, educators, and workforce agencies work in sync toward one goal—a sustainable, future-ready talent pipeline.
Through Kara’s initiative(s), GLC became the operational backbone of a coalition that now includes:
- K-12 schools in the Greater Lafayette Region
- The Region 4 Workforce Board (Tecumseh Area Partnership, Inc.)
- The Wabash Valley Education Center
- Skyepack’s Career+ Pathways™
- Higher Education (Ivy Tech Community College and Purdue University)
Together, this coalition now spans 9 counties, 12 school corporations, and tens of thousands of students.
What Kara’s Leadership Has Delivered
- 150+ employer partnerships—coordinated directly by GLC—across advanced manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, and emerging tech. Kara’s team has turned one-off employer interest into long-term, high-value relationships that fuel regional growth.
- Signature GLC-led experiences such as HireMe!, Manufacturing Week, and Healthcare Month, which now give high school juniors and seniors direct access to interviews, offers, and authentic workplace exploration.
- A unified Career+™ operating system that embeds career coaching, micro-credentials, and WBL directly into the school day. With GLC coordinating employers and scheduling logistics— and Skyepack managing implementation—students, families, and educators now have real-time dashboards showing progress toward career readiness.
Measured Results at Scale
With Kara Webb’s guidance, Greater Lafayette Commerce has transformed the region’s career-connected learning into a sustainable, regionwide career coaching system that works to reach every student, every year. What began as pilot programs in a handful of schools has evolved into an integrated ecosystem spanning 9 counties and 12 school corporations, ensuring that every learner—urban, suburban, or rural—has access to meaningful career exploration, coaching, and work-based learning experiences.
During the 2024–2025 grant period, the impact is undeniable. Over 4,000 students enrolled in Career+™ Micro-Credentials, with projections surpassing 16,000+ next year as additional schools come online. The Locally Created Pathway (LCP) program saw 178 completers this year—expected to grow to 800+—logging 7,020 hours of work-based learning now and an anticipated 45,500+ hours at full scale. When all students’ experiences are counted, the region is on pace to deliver more than 190,000 hours of WBL annually. Career+™ also documented 61,500 career-connected interactions this year, a number projected to exceed 400,000+ as full regional adoption continues.
Behind these results are 150+ employer partnerships across advanced manufacturing, healthcare, logistics, and emerging technologies—up from just over 100 last year—along with more than 20,000 students already served and nearly 59,000 projected for the ‘25- ‘26 school year. Together, Kara and her partners have built a measurable, data-driven, and equitable system that redefines how Indiana prepares its future workforce. In this region, career readiness isn’t a program—it’s a regional infrastructure that connects every student to purpose, every employer to talent, and every community to shared prosperity.
Why This Matters Now (With the Numbers to Prove It)
Indiana is a manufacturing, healthcare, and logistics powerhouse.
Manufacturing remains the state’s largest private-sector employer, accounting for 17.4% of all Indiana jobs—nearly double the national average—and Indiana consistently ranks #1 in the nation for manufacturing employment concentration (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics). The state’s logistics and transportation sector employs more than 280,000 Hoosiers, representing 8% of total state employment and supporting over $20 billion in annual GDP (Conexus Indiana, 2024). Meanwhile, healthcare and life sciences continue to surge, contributing $150 billion annually to the state economy and employing 400,000+ workers, making it Indiana’s second-largest employment sector (BioCrossroads, 2024).
Exports and industry mix are shifting.
Indiana exported over $59 billion in manufactured goods in 2024, led by chemicals ($24.7 billion), transportation equipment ($12 billion), and medical and optical instruments ($3.9 billion) (U.S. Census Bureau, 2025). This evolving mix underscores the critical need for chemical operators, process technicians, logistics specialists, and healthcare professionals—the very career pathways Kara Webb and her team at Greater Lafayette Commerce are developing through Career+™ partnerships with employers like Evonik, Tate & Lyle, IU Health, and subregional logistics hubs.
The economics of hiring favor early pipelines.
The average cost-per-hire in the U.S. is about $4,700 (SHRM, 2024), often far higher for technical and healthcare roles where onboarding and compliance costs add up quickly. Career+™ Programs that embed work-based learning (WBL) and career coaching into the school day reduce both time-to-fill and turnover, turning education partnerships into measurable return on investment for employers.
Policy alignment is accelerating.
Indiana’s Graduation Pathways and the new single diploma with Honors+ seals require students to show evidence of work-based learning, employability skills, and credentials of value—exactly what Career+™ delivers. The system also aligns seamlessly with the Next Level Programs of Study framework, helping schools meet accountability metrics while connecting students to real opportunities in their local economies.
And the research is clear: work-based learning works.
Studies from Brookings, Jobs for the Future, and Advance CTE show that high-quality WBL improves postsecondary enrollment, job placement, and long-term earnings—especially when experiences are scaffolded and supported by educators and employers who coach students through authentic workplace challenges.
In short, the data confirms what Kara Webb has been building: a regional ecosystem perfectly aligned with Indiana’s fastest-growing industries, ensuring students are ready to thrive where the jobs—and the future—already are.
A Case Study: Reinventing the Chemical Operator Pipeline
When Evonik Industries approached Kara in late 2024, they faced two barriers:
- A need to train new hires faster without interrupting production, and
- A bottleneck in the company’s internal training pipeline.
Kara Webb brought together Evonik, and Ivy Tech Community College, she started with a simple question: What does a great Chemical Process Operator actually need to know—and when should they learn it?
Her team built the solution backward from the job. The first step begins in high school, where students complete a Career+ Pathways™ 25-hour virtual micro-internship in chemical operations. The experience gives students an inside look at real plant environments, process flow, and safety systems while earning a micro-credential that stacks directly into Ivy Tech’s Chemical Operations apprenticeship model.
Upon graduation, qualified students transition into full-time employment with participating employers as Chemical Processing Operators—earning wages and benefits from day one. Through Ivy Tech’s earn-and-learn model, apprentices work three days a week on-site and attend two days of college coursework toward their Technical Certificate or Associate degree in Chemical Process Operations. Employers maintain production efficiency while apprentices advance through industry-recognized training aligned to the state’s Registered Apprenticeship framework.
We’re excited to announce that Primient, Tate & Lyle, Cargill, and Sustainia have joined this opportunity. By clustering companies within similar industries, we’re able to offer even more focused and meaningful training experiences. This approach helps students explore connected career paths and understand how different organizations within an industry work together to drive innovation.
The outcome? Higher throughput, better-prepared hires, and a seamless talent bridge from high school to college to career. Students no longer have to choose between education and employment—they’re doing both, with clear advancement pathways and no debt.
This model—now being adapted for healthcare and semiconductor manufacturing—epitomizes Kara’s brand of innovation: align partners, simplify delivery, and scale through shared systems that benefit employers, educators, and students alike.
Career+ Pathways™: The Regional Operating System Kara Helped Shape
Career+ Pathways™, powered by Skyepack, is the digital and curricular backbone that operationalizes Kara’s regional ecosystem.
Inside the system:
- Micro-credentials co-designed with 40+ employers
- Next Level (Grade 8): 2,419 students completed exploration and goal-setting.
- Workplace Communication (Grades 9–10): 865 enrollments focused on professional communication.
- Workplace Leadership (Grade 12): 744 students prepared resumes, interviews, and FAFSA readiness.
- Work-based learning at scale: employer-led bootcamps, student-run enterprises, and flexible 25-hour virtual micro-internships for rural and transportation-limited schools.
- Role-based dashboards for students, teachers, employers, and administrators—connecting exploration, credentials, and experiences into a single student profile.
Why it works:
- Schools get audit-ready data for Graduation Pathways and diploma seals.
- Employers get low-cost recruiting pipelines and consistent evaluation rubrics.
- Workforce boards get live performance dashboards and tangible ROI metrics.
What Kara Asks of Her Community
Employers: Name a Talent Champion whose job includes youth pipeline engagement. Host two chats, one tour, and one 25-hour micro-internship per semester.
Schools: Embed career exploration and micro-credentials into the school day for all students—not just a few.
Higher Ed: Keep aligning workforce-side programs (like Ivy Tech’s technical certificates) to stack seamlessly into degrees.
Workforce Boards & Chambers: Fund shared infrastructure—marketplaces, coordinators, and sector cohorts—and measure hires and retention , not just event counts.
Kara’s North Star: “It’s Not About the One; It’s About the All.”
Kara often reminds partners that access to opportunity isn’t an add-on—it’s the foundation.
“With Career+™, we serve 100% of students,” she says. “We’re not excluding anyone. Everyone gets the same opportunity to explore and connect to careers that exist right here.”
That’s the essence of the virtuous cycle Kara champions:
Employers articulate needs → schools align → students gain experience → employers hire → the region prospers.
It’s how Greater Lafayette keeps its young talent local—and how Indiana stays competitive globally.
How You Can Get Involved
Employers (Region 4 and beyond):
- Join the Career+™ Employer Marketplace.
- Post a chat, tour, or micro-internship in your priority roles.
- Measure your return: Career+™ students reduce recruiting time and cost-per-hire (≈$4,700 per hire, per SHRM).
Schools & ESCs:
- Adopt Career+™ Micro-Credentials (Grades 8, 9–10, 12) aligned with Indiana Graduation Pathways.
- Integrate WBL coordinators and track experiences through the Career+™ dashboard.
Civic & Philanthropic Partners:
- Fund regional sector cohorts (chemical ops, healthcare, semiconductors).
- Support student stipends, transportation, and equipment to expand access.
The Road Ahead
By Kara’s count, this coalition has attracted nearly $10 million in grants over five years—laying the foundation for a self-sustaining regional ecosystem fueled by employer investment, school partnership, and state collaboration.
Her philosophy remains simple:
“It’s not about the one; it’s about the all.”
That mindset—backed by real results—is what makes Kara Webb not just a regional leader but a statewide model for what’s possible when business and education truly work together.
Learn More & Connect
- Visit careerpluspathways.com
- Explore Greater Lafayette Commerce Workforce Initiatives
- Contact Kara Webb , Director of Workforce Development, Greater Lafayette Commerce, at 765.742.4044 or email mailto:info@careerpluspathways.com or mailto:kwebb@greaterlafayettecommerce.com
