Manufacturing News
September 25, 2026
September 25, 2026 · Statewide · Story 6 of 6
Conexus Indiana Opens Rising 30 Class of 2027 Nominations Through December 1
Conexus Indiana opened nominations September 22, 2026 for the Rising 30 Class of 2027: the seventh annual program recognizing young professionals age 30 or younger in Indiana's advanced manufacturing and logistics sector, which employs more than 800,000 Hoosiers and represents roughly one-third of Indiana's GDP. Nominations are open through December 1, 2026, with honorees notified by mid-January 2027; the program is presented by Katz, Sapper & Miller (KSM), with Jordan Mayer, partner in KSM's Manufacturing & Distribution Services Group, urging employers to nominate rising leaders. The 2026 class included honorees from companies including Allegion, Jasper Engines & Transmissions, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana, Honda Indiana Auto Plant, Zimmer Biomet, Cummins, Lippert, and Fort Wayne Carbon Fiber, spanning roles from quality engineering and controls to supply chain, materials science, and IT.
- Impact
- The nomination calendar opened roughly six weeks earlier than the prior-year cadence, Conexus's own May 2026 announcement had said nominations would open 'in November', a pull-forward that appears deliberate under CEO Jay Wirts and suggests Conexus is competing for employer attention before year-end budget and performance-review cycles consume plant-leader bandwidth. The presenting sponsor shift from Purdue University (Class of 2025) to KSM (Classes of 2026 and 2027) is commercially significant: KSM, which launched a new investment banking practice in January 2026, gains first-mover access to an emerging generation of finance, operations, and supply-chain leaders at companies like Allegion, Zimmer Biomet, and Lippert before those professionals become M&A or transaction advisory clients, compressing a relationship-building cycle that typically takes years. For small and mid-sized Indiana manufacturers, the more urgent signal is that Rising 30 honorees in 2027 will feed directly into the AML Industry Talent Association, officially launched by Conexus in April 2026, whose mandate to define occupational standards for Robotics & Automation, Microelectronics, and Supply Chain means this year's nominees may help co-author the competency frameworks that govern how Ivy Tech and Purdue Polytechnic train the next generation of Indiana manufacturing workers.
- Watch
- Watch the mid-January 2027 Rising 30 honoree announcement for the distribution of employers and disciplines: specifically whether the 2027 class reflects the robotics, controls, and ESS-adjacent skills that Amazon's Greenwood ramp and Samsung SDI's New Carlisle ESS pivot will demand, which would signal whether Conexus's AML ITA competency framework is tracking to actual near-term employer needs.
- For the huddle
The Rising 30 nomination deadline is December 1: do we have a rising leader on our team who is 30 or younger and deserves external recognition, and have we thought about what nominating them signals both internally about how we value talent development and externally about our company's profile in Indiana's AML community?
From the brief, September 25, 2026
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- Indiana Is Now the 41st NRC Agreement State. What That Could Mean for Your Bill in 2028.
- Samsung SDI Takes Full Control of New Carlisle. The Chemistry Question Is Unresolved.
- Amazon's $100M Robotics Plant in Greenwood: Indiana Becomes Robot-Making Hub
- Conexus Indiana Opens Rising 30 Class of 2027 Nominations Through December 1
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