Episode Title Indiana Women in Tech Week 6, AI Needs Women’s Voices Featuring Angie Carel

Hey, welcome back to the AGI podcast, episode six of our special series for 2026 Indiana Women in Tech. And actually, I'm just so excited because Angie Carroll is like the rock star of AI from Fort Wayne. And while we know each other well from LinkedIn and whatnot, we don't really get that much opportunity to talk. So with that, I will hand the mic over to you and let you introduce yourself and talk about what you're doing up there in Fort Wayne, Angie.

Well, thanks, Jason. I don't call myself a rock star nor think of myself as a rock star, but I appreciate that intro. Up in Fort Wayne, up north, we have a large community of people navigating the world of artificial intelligence. And so my lane is generative AI, and I founded a community called AI in Fort Wayne. We gather monthly all people from all industries, all genders, all ages, working together to try to understand and sort through how to use AI in our day-to-day lives.

You have a really eclectic group. So I was actually up in Fort Wayne when I was working for Citizen AI for a community mental health center thing while you were off in Paris or touring France. And I got a chance to get there and I was like, wow, I was so impressed with how big the group was, how eclectic it was, how much the conversation was. You seem to have developed a pretty robust group of, like you said, every gender, every background, all different. Did you start in tech or did you fall in love with AI when it came out and not come from a tech background?

Neither, really. I didn't come from a tech background. I didn't fall in love with tech when AI came out. I was navigating independent consulting. I had shut down my marketing agency. So I come from a very, like, creative, strategic background. business building background. And when I shut the agency down to do independent consulting, ChatGPT hit mainstream. And I am insatiably curious. And so as soon as I saw it, I dug in and I thought this is going to change everything. And I started doing consulting with marketing teams first in AI, but then that overflowed into, you know, teams in all different departments, all company sizes from even from individual solopreneurs all the way up to large mid market, really. companies. So I don't think one of my main messages is that this new era of tech isn't for the tech people exclusively. Like it's highly accessible and easy to implement for people like me that are just extremely curious, fast learners. And it isn't. And that's the thing about AI is is that all of the generations before and all of the tech revolutions with artificial intelligence have really been only accessible for the people that understood coding and computer language. But now with generative AI, natural language processing, You and I can do things with a computer that, you know, developers used to be able to do, but we can do it just by having a conversation just like this, you know, as a friend talking to a friend.

Yeah, and that is awesome. I was working as a development director for the Salvation Army in Lafayette when Chad GPT 3.5 launched and doing lots of marketing. And I will say I'm kind of a debater by, so I was like, oh, this thing can't

write.

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