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All in the Neighborhood
Photo courtesy of Angela Hicks
Photo courtesy of Angela Hicks
As native Hoosiers, Angie’s List cofounders Angela Hicks (MBA 2000) and Bill Oesterle (MBA 1992) knew they wanted to ground themselves in a community where their business could not only grow, but foster connections to the local community. The Near Eastside neighborhood of Indianapolis fit that bill—and it didn’t take long for the hoped-for engagement to follow. In the late 1990s, when Angie’s List was just getting off the ground, the company’s employees reached out immediately. “We probably had about 20 employees at the time…and [they] couldn’t help but get involved,” Hicks, who was recently featured in the To Serve Better Project, told the Harvard Gazette. “We had employees doing the ‘lunch buddies’ at the elementary school, we had employees helping teachers decorate their classrooms…doing food drives—anything we could do to give back, because quite honestly, we viewed that community as our home, and taking care of it and being supportive was super important.”
As Angie’s List expanded, so did its commitment to Eastside. “We were growing, we had resources coming in, and we were going to share that with our neighbors,” says Bill Oesterle. “We were going to employ them, we were going to encourage people to live in that neighborhood, and we were going to be part of the place.”
The company founded the Angie’s List Community Grant program in 2015, offering funds to local nonprofits; 20 years ago, Hicks and Oesterle joined up with Scott Brenton (MBA 1999) to launch the Bob Orr Entrepreneurial Fellowship Program for college graduates. “I look at the different leaders around the city that came up through the program…and they’ve gone from being the 20-somethings to the 40-somethings and are making incredible contributions to the community,” said Hicks.
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