It’s named for a former Indiana governor from Evansville — Robert Orr, who was in office 1981-89. But the Orr Fellowship program, created in 2001 to help new college graduates prepare for leadership roles in the workplace, always has been exclusive to Central Indiana.
Until now, that is. Orr Fellowship has established a Southwestern Indiana chapter, which will welcome its first class in June 2025.
Thirty finalists met for interviews with partner companies Nov. 15 in Evansville, including Mater Dei High School graduate Grace Wagner, who is studying industrial engineering at Clemson University in South Carolina.
“All the fellows and Orr Fellowship board members have been at our disposal,” says Wagner, who interviewed with Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana and Old National Bank. “I don’t see another scenario where I’m interviewing with a bank because that’s not a typical engineering path to take. This was an opportunity to see what’s out there in Evansville. These companies want our input. They value our skills.”
Being an Orr Fellow helped kickstart Evansville native Kaelyn Wessel’s career. The Mater Dei alumna graduated from the University of Southern Indiana in December 2023 with a degree in business management, and she was an Orr Fellow with NCW, a staffing and recruiting agency in Indianapolis.
Wessel now is employed with NCW in a full-time recruiting role.
“I’ve gotten a lot from the community that the fellowship fosters,” she says.
Southwestern Indiana companies long had wanted a fellowship program, says Tad Dickel.
“We decided Orr Fellowship has such a great reputation that it would be great to partner with them rather than create something new,” says Dickel, owner of Evansville-based organizational consulting firm T.A. Dickel Group, LLC.
The Evansville Regional Business Committee and Evansville Regional Economic Partnership partnered with Orr Fellowship to create the local chapter. Fellows in the first Southwest Indiana class will work at Berry Global, Inc., CenterPoint Energy, Deaconess Health System, Heritage Federal Credit Union, Koch Enterprises, Inc., Liberty Federal Credit Union, Morley, Old National Bank, Robert Dietrick Company, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Indiana, United Companies, Welborn Baptist Foundation, Warehouse Services Inc., and Indiana-based ag tech company Anu.
Fellows receive leadership training and executive coaching and participate in regular social activities, projects with nonprofits, case competitions, and a business leader speaker series during their those two years.
According to Orr Fellowship officials, graduates of the program are working across 73 industries and 273 companies. They earn 2.5 times more than their peers in entry-level positions, 84 percent of them remain in Indiana, and with 624 alumni and 120 current fellows, Orr Fellowship has partnered with 41 companies, adding 13 new partners in 2024 alone.
Dickel says Evansville-area companies are excited to see such impact extend to Southwestern Indiana, and local universities are on board, as well.
“We’ve been really pleased with the response from the business community, and they see it has an opportunity to bring in and retain talent,” he says.
