Kyle Kuntz, '10

Company: Hunt Construction Group

Position: Business Development - Collegiate Athletics

About Your Company: Established in 1944, Hunt Construction Group has provided over 67 years of construction expertise, making its mark in virtually every major industry. With offices established nationwide, Hunt currently maintains a contract volume of between $6 and $8 billion of work and is ranked 27th on the Top 400 Contractors List by Engineering News-Record (ENR); 1st on ENR’s list of top sports venue contractors. Hunt continues to innovate in order to provide the latest services to its clients with a strong emphasis in sustainable construction and building information modeling (BIM).

How do you define entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship is, by its simplest definition, the monetization of innovation. In my position however, I am more concerned with INTRApreneurship. Like entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship is the planning, deployment, and monetization of innovative ideas and initiatives, only in a corporate setting. The rapidly evolving business environment in which we all now operate requires a great deal of adaptability in order to not just stay relevant, but to survive. That adaptability, gained through the effective utilization of innovation and the management of change, is only obtainable with an understanding of entrepreneurship and its guiding principals.

How did the entrepreneurship program at Ball State help you obtain your current position?

The entrepreneurship program and the people who lead the program had everything to do with my obtaining my current position. Not only did my education provide with the skills and confidence necessary to work at Hunt, but a meeting with our CEO while I was a graduate assistant with the program led to my being offered the position. The connections I made, both as an undergraduate in the program and as a graduate student with the program are some of the most important connections in my career today.

What is your greatest memory of the entrepreneurship program at Ball State?

It would be too easy to say that the trips to Disney or the chance to meet countless successful entrepreneurs or the opportunity to interview the CEO of the company I work for today or even being in a top-ranked undergraduate program are my greatest memories. No, I would have to say the greatest memory I have of the entrepreneurship program was when my hands stopped shaking, I caught my breath, and I stopped sweating because I realized that E-Day was over, and I had passed!