Meet Janis DeWitt | Non-profit President & CEO

We had the good fortune of connecting with Janis DeWitt and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Janis, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I was a non-traditional student as a teen mom and I was given the opportunity to start my career through an internship program based on a recommendation from my school’s Dean of Mathematics. This internship turned into getting my bachelor’s degree by the time my daughter was 6 years old and ultimately a successful career as a software engineer. My experience in the last 23 years since then has been that there is a lack of quality internships where the student gets a full 360 degree understanding of a software development project. I have also seen how non-traditional students (career changes, late career starts, military veterans, stay at home moms re-entering the workforce) have even more difficulty finding these types of opportunities to jump start their careers. My husband, for example, changed careers to move from natural gas drilling to a career in technology at 30 years old, but it took him a lot more effort and time than the average young college graduate to find a job with his new degree. My goal with InnovateConnect is to provide real-world project-based quality software development internships to people who want to get into technology, no matter where they are coming from, and ensure that our training program is so good that they can start any job with companies big or small and be able to successfully navigate all of the aspects of that job.

What should our readers know about your business?
InnovateConnect is an educational non-profit, dedicated to empowering the next generation of software engineering talent through immersive, project-based internships that serve as the cornerstone for their foundational education. It’s not just about software, however, but also the whole Software Development Lifecycle, working with teams, learning the right processes, seeing the big picture, etc. I want to partner with companies who care about giving the best experience to these interns so that they can hire the best people on their teams. My main focus is on the education of these future engineers, but since I want to provide real projects for them to work on, as well as give them experiences with customers, I want to also take the opportunity to complete affordable technology projects for local small businesses where possible.

I’m extremely proud that despite only having been in business for 5 months, we already have an amazing internship success story. We partnered with Privatenode LLC where Greg Farries, CEO, served as a mentor to intern Stephen Gonsalves, who successfully designed and built the InnovateConnect, Inc. website from start to finish. Stephen is a non-traditional student who served honorably in the United States Air Force for 8 years and attended university after this. He graduated from NC State in May 2023 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science. We were able to provide Stephen with a project-based internship in October 2023 so that he could start gaining some experience and figure out which aspects of development he finds the most interesting. He was officially offered and accepted a permanent position with Privatenode in February 2024. We are so happy for him and for Privatenode.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I love how Holly Springs has so much available while still feeling like a small place. For a friend who was staying for a week, I’d definitely take them to the Sunday Chill Open Mic at the Fainting Goat in Fuquay-Varina with Michael Kelley because there is always a great crowd of musical talent, people, and great beer. I’d want to hit all my favorite local restaurants for dinner or lunch over the week like BEP Vietnamese Kitchen, Vieni Ristobar, Chaska Indian Cuisine, and Nightingale Rooftop Restaurant, which has amazing cocktails and small plates. I would also have to stop for a happy hour on the patio at the new Wine 100 and then get a Friday night Jazz fix at Niche Wine Lounge. I would of course want to venture a little further out to show off our amazing NC State Farmers Market and the NC Museum of Art as well as take a trip to The Plant in Pittsboro, which is this cool little mom and pop shops business park with a distillery, brewery, restaurant, gardens, and more. These are some of my favorite things to do that I would have to show off, but it wouldn’t be complete without a couple of fun HIIT and yin yoga classes at The Fitness Lab in Holly Springs to balance out all the great food and drink!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I think the first person I should credit is Kristin Frade, Executive Coach with Novus Global, because she asked me the right kind of questions to get me thinking about what it is that I really want to do and that’s when I realized how much I love teaching and mentoring others. A year after this conversation, I had lunch with a dear friend, Tashonia Blackwell, who challenged me to come up with a company name in one week’s time as a way of showing me that all I had to do was take a first step. In the month that followed coming up with a name, I had so much love and support from friends who are already fabulous women business owners which gave me the confidence to push forward and get things moving. These women include Bonnie Farries, who is a member of InnovateConnect’s Board of Directors, Stacey Smith & Tanya Bange of The Fitness Lab, Jasmin Sturla of Sturla Studios, and Stephanie Phifer of EITR Technologies. Also big shoutout to Matthew Swartz-Vega of Pure Brain for believing in this business and recommending us for this interview!

Website: www.innovateconnect.org

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/innovateconnectinc