INDIANAPOLIS — Mary Kay Huse was a 24-year-old rising star in the tech world when she sat across the table from Scott Dorsey and said the words he hasn't forgotten more than 20 years later, words that sum up everything anyone needs to know about Huse and her drive and determination.
It was 2004, and Dorsey was interviewing Huse for a job at his startup digital marketing company ExactTarget when he asked her that standard interview question. What are your career ambitions?
"And sincerely, I vividly remember. I can picture exactly where we were sitting, and she looked me right in the eye and said, 'I want to be CEO of a software company,'" said Dorsey, now a managing partner at High Alpha after ExactTarget was sold to Salesforce for $2.5 billion in 2013.
"And I was like, 'Whoa. That level of boldness and ambition doesn't usually come so early in a career.' It really stood out to me."
The rest, as they say, is history. Dorsey hired Huse, and she spent the next 16 years with ExactTarget and Salesforce as "an absolute rock star," he says, before venturing out as CEO of music startup Mandolin, a live streaming concert platform launched during COVID.
And then in 2023, Huse made a phone call to Dorsey. She needed his guidance. Huse was in the running to be the president and general manager of the city's newest professional sports franchise, the Indy Ignite.
"My first thought was, 'This is really different. This is kind of coming out of left field,'" Dorsey says. "And then very quickly, when I started kind of thinking it through, I thought, 'This is perfect, absolutely perfect.'"
Throughout her career, Huse has been in charge of ventures that saw her staring down million-dollar figures on quarterly statements. She has traveled the world for a two-decade career that put her among the most brilliant minds in tech and startups.
A computer science major by education, Huse has always been an entrepreneur at heart, a person who loves building things. And in 2023, back home in Indy, she was charged with building something she never saw coming.
A women's professional volleyball team was launching in Indy, the creation of Jim Schumacher and Don Hutchinson, two volleyball dads. A mutual friend encouraged Schumacher and Huse to talk.
The two went to a breakfast that Huse thought would be a brief business meetup. Maybe Schumacher wanted to bounce some ideas off of her or, at most, maybe he wanted her to be a consultant to the Indy Ignite. Schumacher had other ideas.
That breakfast turned into a 3-hour conversation that lit a fire in Huse, a spark she'd been missing in her career, a connection to a community. "After that breakfast with Jim, I went home to my wife," Huse says, "and I was like, 'Oh yes. I'm going to do this.'"
Huse was going to be president and general manager of the Indy Ignite.
A few days later, she met Schumacher and Hutchinson for coffee. She liked how "the two of them were just blowing each other crap."
"They were so excited and so passionate, and I just was able to join in. I had two older brothers growing up. I worked in tech. I worked with men my whole life," Huse says. "We kind of just went from there. I'm never afraid to give them my opinion. They're not short on opinions, either."
And together, all of it is working out splendidly.
In the Ignite's second season, the team is No. 1 in Major League Volleyball with a 21-5 record and is headed to the playoffs in Dallas next month, marking a back-to-back appearance in the postseason.
For the most part, it's Huse who runs this volleyball show, says Hutchinson.
She negotiated deals for players and "killed it" when it came to making the Ignite a product the city would embrace. She landed sponsors and made the game-day experience electric. She created Pepper, the team's beloved volleyball-headed mascot, who Schumacher calls "the best thing that ever happened to the franchise."
"She loved sports, she had a passion for it, and she has really taken this thing to the next level on a day-to-day basis," Schumacher says, "which allows us to act and think like owners, and get out of her way and let her really build the team."
And Huse has built the team with a toughness and relentless grit. That's something she learned early in life.
'I grew up in the gym'
Sports have always been a tender spot for Huse, a place that takes her back to her childhood and her father, Steve Huse, who was a high school basketball coach, always encouraging his three children in all sports.
Huse was raised in Lebanon, Ind. Her parents were born and raised there, too, and they were both teachers.
But in the heyday of Indiana high school basketball in the 1980s, Steve Huse was a standout coach at Ben Davis, Brebeuf, Sheridan and Brownsburg, where he took his team to the Sweet 16 and was named coach of the year.
"As my mom always said, 'I grew up in the gym,'" Huse says. "And my brothers are six and nine years older than me, and so they were playing, my dad was coaching, so I just grew up in and around sports."
But life took a turn for Huse and her family when she was 10 when her father, a larger than life hero to her, died of brain cancer. "That sucked," Huse says.
She persevered through the grief and found solace in playing sports. Huse was a three-sport athlete in high school — volleyball, basketball and tennis. At DePauw University, playing tennis, Huse realized during her first computer science class that "this was how my brain worked. It's logic."
And then, she did some internships for computer science coding, and she absolutely hated it.
"I was way more drawn to the marketing and customer side and was always talking to those people," Huse says. "So, by the time I graduated college, I had a computer science degree knowing I did not want to code. But computer science is actually just problem solving. It doesn't have to be about coding. It's logic and how to approach problems and solve them."
And that has been Huse's super power.
Huse moved up the ranks at Exact Target and then Salesforce. She left Indiana to spend three years in London, then she spent seven years in San Francisco before moving back to Indy just before COVID.
By that time, Huse had figured out that she really loved building things from scratch. That's when Mandolin was born, an Indy startup in the music tech space, a live streaming platform during COVID. She worked with artists, helping them produce concerts online.
Mandolin hosted its first big concert six weeks after its launch, Judah & the Lion, and 2,500 people bought tickets. The company made $1 million in revenue in less than six months and raised over $20 million.
"It was just a very, very fast-moving train," Huse said. "We really had an amazing run."
Mandolin was named the best live streaming platform and Huse was named to Billboard's 2022 Women in Music Top Executives List. But when in-person concerts returned, Mandolin's mission wasn't sustainable.
The company shut down in April 2023. By December, Huse had found her next gig.
"Women's sports, in particular, was just an amazing opportunity I wanted to participate in. But ultimately, it is a venture. And we have to figure out how to make revenue and manage expenses so that we can create longevity for this and make sure that this lasts beyond any of us," she says.
"So it felt like a non-profit mission, but with for-profit challenges and opportunities. So that was just like a unique combination. And I jumped in pretty quickly."
'There's sort of no bad idea'
In January 2024, Huse started building the Indy Ignite brand and the organization, while also traveling that inaugural season to see all the other league venues, soaking in everything she could to launch her team in 2025.
Huse turned to the network of women sports leaders in the city. The Indiana Pacers Mel Raines and Indianapolis Motor Speedway's Allison Melangton were always just a phone call away.
"After a long career at ExactTarget and Salesforce, and then a very intense three and a half years of Mandolin, which was definitely the most intense of my career, just the pressure of being the CEO," Huse says, "I really thought this was going to be a bit of a downshift. And it sure hasn't been that."
Huse knew how to launch a brand, how to build a fan base, how to build a team, but she hadn't hired coaches or players before. She hadn't worked in sports.
"I never had an appreciation for everything that goes into a sports franchise, everything that goes into a game day experience, everything that goes into signing professional athletes and working within a league," she says. "The league was a startup. Our venue wasn't built. It was nothing but gray."
Huse dove in. Before the Ignite had a home court — the Fishers Event Center — before a game had been played, Huse was out in the community talking to anyone who would listen about the Indy Ignite.
"I always joke that in 2024, before we had hit the court the first time, every person I met with, I had to then explain what Indy Ignite was," Huse says. "And now I can say 'Indy Ignite' and people know what it is."
Huse doesn't take the credit for that, not even close. She gives that to her marketing and communications team and everyone else in the organization who has fought to make this franchise great.
"We had 12 months to get out in the community and put our brand out there. I could list 150 things that we have done, because there's no silver bullet. It's grassroots marketing. It's digital marketing. It's having a table at every event you can possibly think of," Huse says. "There's no bad idea."
One of the most successful ideas has been the game day experience. First-time Ignite fans walk in not knowing what to expect from women's professional volleyball, and most of the time it exceeds their expectations, Huse says.
"And so that's been our latest tactic, just get people to a game, tell them to come back and bring a friend," she says. "But it does continue to be hard, the brand awareness, as much as that has grown, we still haven't found that silver bullet that converts brand awareness and excitement to buying a ticket and coming to a game."
One of the key next moves is to ramp up efforts to get fans feeling connected to players. The Ignite had seven returning players this season. And, knock on wood, Huse says, she believes the team will have even more for its third season.
"So trying to create some loyalty not just to the Ignite, but to their favorite players," Huse says. "Make them want to cheer for their favorite player, feel the excitement of your favorite player scoring."
'This is the shipwright executive right here'
The arena is electric, and it's packed with fans as a volleyball doubleheader lured a sold-out crowd to the Fishers Event Center last Sunday. First, Indiana took on Purdue in a spring scrimmage aired on Big Ten Network, followed by the Ignite taking on the Dallas Pulse.
Huse, who quietly, behind the scenes and without fanfare, poured her heart and soul into an upstart professional volleyball team, is in the arena, taking it all in. Her wife, Meghann York, is there. And her mother, on her 77th birthday, is there, too, watching her daughter's volleyball creation come to life.
Major League Volleyball commissioner Jaime Weston stands on court, and she's more than willing to talk about her star general manager Huse.
"This is the shipwright executive right here, understanding her music background, her time at Salesforce and tech. She really is all of the ingredients a modern front office executive would need to have," Weston says. "She understands the entertainment. She understands the business side. So, really, we're lucky to have her."
Huse gives credit to an entire team behind her, including Carly Klanac, vice president of marketing and gaming, who says Huse has been the best boss she's ever had.
She's tough, caring, competitive and "unbelievably brave wanting to build not just a franchise, but a really tight team on and off the court," Klanac says. "She trusts her people to do their jobs. I give her an idea and she says, 'What do you need to make that happen?'"
The way Huse has been able to quickly ingrain the Ignite into the community has been impressive to watch, says Sarah Myer, chief of staff and strategy with Indiana Sports Corp.
"I honestly think some of her startup mentality is why this is so successful," Myer says. "She knew how important that was going to be to get people to show up. She knew how to make the right relationships and recruited really great people to come alongside her."
'Winning makes a lot of things a little easier'
The Ignite's first season was a solid one, finishing 2025 with a 13-15 record.
"We made it to the playoffs by the skin of our teeth," Huse says. "But, the single most important thing I did this off season was hire a new coach."
And that has been a game changer. Lauren Bertolacci, a native of Australia and a former professional setter with a 10-year playing career in France, Germany, Spain and Switzerland, earned a reputation as one of the most accomplished coaches in European volleyball.
Before she came to the Ignite, Bertolacci was the coach of Swiss powerhouse Viteos NUC, compiling a 207–37 record over seven seasons.
"Yeah, my record's nice. What I care about more is that I've won 16 championships, more than the record," Bertolacci says. "Records don't really matter. The championships do. And so I'm preparing them to do that."
Huse liked everything about Bertolacci, especially the tough, relentless grit she brings to the franchise.
"While she's worked in volleyball for 20 years, I've worked in technology for 20 years. There's a lot we teach each other," Huse says. "We have a lot of shared values about how to build teams, how to empower people and also hold them accountable. We have a very high standard, have a strong point of view of what success looks like."
That incredible winning record Bertolacci brought to Indy didn't hurt, either, and it's continued.
"I feel very strongly we have the best coach not just in our league, but in in the U.S. for professional women's volleyball," Huse says. And at the end of the day, victories translate to more franchise success.
"People, of course, are the most important thing in any organization," Huse says, "but winning makes a lot of things a little easier."
The Ignite have two more regular season matches — Home games, 7 p.m. Friday, May 1, against the Columbus Fury and 3 p.m. Sunday, May 3 versus the San Diego Mojo. Tickets and info here.
More with Mary Kay Huse
Books or streaming? "Well, I'm obsessed with 'Shrinking,' just finished Season 3. All the characters are super relatable. Really good. I read fiction. Books are a getaway release for me, a wind down. The last book that I loved was 'My Friends' by Fredrik Backman."
How would you describe yourself as a leader? "I always say I want to be really empowering, but also hold people really accountable, which means I hope they grow and learn and feel supported in that, but they also know I have a very, very high bar."
What's stood out to you on this volleyball journey? "I want to share every chance I get how positively overwhelmed I've been at the support that we've received from the community. This whole community has helped lift us up in our first couple of years. And I know my peers in other markets just don't have that same experience. So it feels really lucky to be doing this in Indianapolis and central Indiana with them wanting to make it the women's sports capital of the world."
Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on X: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indy Ignite GM Mary Kay Huse: From tech and music guru to pro volleyball whiz
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