Karin Woodside

PortageLife.com is a new community-based website, focusing on an exclusively-positive view on the people, places, organizations, and businesses serving Portage, Indiana. We look to be a central hub for all of the great information out there and tell...

PortageLife.com is a new community-based website, focusing on an exclusively-positive view on the people, places, organizations, and businesses serving Portage, Indiana. We look to be a central hub for all of the great information out there and tell...

PortageLife.com is a new community-based website, focusing on an exclusively-positive view on the people, places, organizations, and businesses serving Portage, Indiana. We look to be a central hub for all of the great information out there and tell...

Mayor Olga G. Velazquez was elected as the first female mayor in the City of Portage and Porter County in 2007. She had served on the Portage City Council, Portage Plan Commission, Ways and Means, Ordinance and Budget Committees and chaired the...

Chris Mahlmann launched Ideas in Motion, a business development agency, in January of 2006. In 2007, he and his family moved to Valparaiso, Indiana to move closer to his wife’s family, and the business really began to grow.  The 20+ years of...

After graduating from Highland High School in 1977, Tom Lounges spent a year at Purdue Calumet and then a year at Indiana University Northwest before receiving a job offer for a print and radio gig and never went back to college. Someday he hopes to...

Actively involved as an educator for over thirty years, Jeff Brown has participated in Artist Residencies through the National Endowment for the Arts, Indiana Arts Commission, Illinois Arts Council and National Endowment for the Humanities.He has...

Bruce Evans is instructor of jazz bass and contrabass, and has been on the VU faculty for more than twenty years. He received a B.M.E. from Defiance University and an M.M.E. from Roosevelt University, where he studied with Harold Siegal. He currently...

Billy Foster, a respected pianist, composer, educator, and producer, has been jazz piano instructor at Valparaiso University since 1979. In this capacity he has conducted many jazz clinics, lectures, and educational performances on campus, in the...

Ed Soliday was born and raised in Valparaiso, Indiana, where he has lived for over 50 years. He attended Valparaiso High School, where he ran cross-country, played basketball and ran track and field. He is married to the former Mary Kay Wagoner of...