Business

“I always wanted to be a New York Times bestseller,” she says. Now that it’s happened, “I still want to be a household name, you know.”

“I think Jim Brainard has done some great things for this city, but I do think it’s time for a different skill set,” says Carmel city councillor Rick Sharp. Sounds like a campaign message.

Including one of Indiana’s biggest cons, a complicated woman in her final days, a reality-TV hilljack, the crafty governor-elect, a big-deal farmer, the coupling of an actress and a corn-fed rocker, and more.

Says Hicks, “I get things done. I’m analytical. Being in front of a camera was very, very foreign to me. At one point I wanted to be an actuary.”

“The joke is, my dad always asks me, ‘When are you going to get a real job?’” Fogle says. “I’m like, ‘Hopefully not for a while.’ I love what I do.”

You may need a drink: Change is coming to the city’s most popular area. But that won’t stop some impassioned residents from fighting for its future.

“Indiana has traditionally had a friendly business environment that is the backbone of the Hoosier economy,” says CEO Jeff Smulyan. “This is two steps backward and runs counter to what businesses are demanding.”

The sale of ExactTarget to the San Francisco software firm Salesforce.com created more than a dozen new millionaires here—executives who are already pouring that money into local tech businesses.

Indianapolis city-county councillor Zach Adamson, who married partner Christian Mosburg on Saturday in Washington, D.C., quickly praised the decision.

Hailing from New Palestine, east of Indianapolis, Ahrendts has become one of the most important women in the business world in recent years.

Having a 20,000-acre spread, one of the largest farms in one of the nation’s most productive farm states, buys some clout.

First planted in 2010, The Feel Good Farm is a 60-acre, certified-organic growing operation near Sheridan, where the suburban sprawl of Hamilton County gives way to a flat landscape of fields, fencerows, and barns.

Baggott took an early retirement and, in 2010—just a year after ExactTarget surpassed $100 million in annual sales—purchased a 98-acre farm near Greenfield to raise livestock. Never mind that he had no agricultural experience whatsoever.

In simpler times, Bowman’s plan might have passed for good old Hoosier ingenuity. Unfortunately, Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company—and a notorious ball-buster—doesn’t see it that way. And neither did the highest court in the land.

This encounter with Bing grew from—ahem—the kernel of an idea: Challenge the traditional definition of “farmer” by highlighting the more contemporary elements in Indiana agriculture.