How Purdue Engineering Led Me to MedTech Startup CEO

Founder & CEO of Inuitap Medical, Jessica Traver Ingram

I showed up on Purdue’s campus on a very hot and humid August morning in 2009, not having the slightest idea of what the next few years were going to entail. I knew they would be challenging and that I was headed on an adventure that would determine the path of my future, but I don’t think I really understood the extent to which those two statements would be true.

Engineering is hard. It’s extremely hard. I’m pretty sure you know that by now, but in the off chance someone has told you differently, I wanted to get that out there. I don’t know a single person who has been through Purdue’s engineering program that thought that it was easy. I still consider graduating from Mechanical Engineering to be one of the hardest things I have accomplished thus far in my life (and I started a medtech company at the age of 25).

But, that is why Purdue engineers graduate and do so well in the world. We have been prepared to deal with the stressful and harsh realities of life after college. As an engineering student you will deal with setbacks (and persevere), you will doubt that you are smart enough to pass a class or two (or many, and find out that you are), and you will learn to deal with stress and failure (without crumbling or falling apart). These experiences will develop you to have skills that are rare, yet very important in the workforce (and in life). You will come to realize that the challenges you faced at Purdue have given you resilience and mental fortitude that will set you apart from your peers and prime you for success in whatever industry you find yourself in.

Now, I think it’s important to rewind a bit here and tell you more about who I am, how I got to where I am today, and how the skills I gained from Purdue have been instrumental in my career. 

I am not what most would consider a “typical engineer” (not that there is such a thing). Nobody ever expected that I would take the path I have taken in my life—or anything close to it. I was not Valedictorian in high school (not even close) and I was never pegged as the type of girl who would be interested math and science. But, to everyone’s surprise (including my own) I fell in love with physics my junior year of high school and decided that I wanted to do something that could help me blend my passion for physics with my strong desire to have an impact on this world. I applied to Purdue’s School of Engineering, got in and went on to graduate from the School of Mechanical Engineering with a focus in healthcare/biomechanics.

I struggled at Purdue. That is no secret to my professors, advisors, and pretty much anyone that knows me or has heard me speak about my journey. I was definitely not the smartest of my peers, but I worked hard, I persevered and didn’t give up (despite wanting to on more than one occasion), and eventually I made it through the program. Along the way I found a professor that I loved working with, and whose research inspired me. By senior year I really hadn’t found a job that I loved and wasn’t sure what my next step was going to be. It worked out that the professor ended up sponsoring my research so I could continue working on it while working towards my Master’s Degree! For my thesis, I began researching healthcare startups and different innovation methodologies and processes to better understand why so many healthcare startups fail to get off the ground. I then used the findings from that research to build a framework that could be used in the healthcare industry to enable successful innovation and product launch.

Using the research and framework from my thesis, I co-founded my own medical device company, IntuiTap Medical, where we are developing a tool to help physicians more accurately and efficiently place spinal needles for epidurals and diagnostic spinal taps. I have been the CEO of IntuiTap for 4 years now.

As a startup CEO I am no stranger to setbacks and failures. Things rarely go according to plan when launching a company, and I've found I have to be extremely mentally tough as this job can be an emotional rollercoaster. Being a first time founder right out of grad school is like drinking from a firehose. You are constantly trying to learn how to do something you’ve never done before, so you’re trying to absorb as much information as possible, as quickly as possible. At the same time you always feel that although you are moving full speed ahead, you are never moving fast enough, and that there just isn’t enough time in the day. Don’t get me wrong, being a startup founder can be a lot of fun, and I love my job, but it’s not a career path many people are suited for or can handle. I, however, was prepared. What I just described is surprisingly similar to how I felt at times during my days in engineering at Purdue, so when it came time to experience them as a startup CEO, I was ready. I wasn’t afraid of challenges, in fact I looked forward to overcoming them because I knew I could. I had been overcoming challenges for the past few years in college and grad school and was therefore pretty comfortable with the stress and uncertainty that accompany them.

The Purdue engineering program taught me how to handle myself in stressful situations. It taught me how to take a step back and reevaluate my plan when things aren’t going the way I had hoped, rather than completely shut down and freak out (I have seen this happen to others on more than one occasion). It taught me mental toughness, and how to push through situations that feel impossible or overwhelming. Lastly, it taught me that no matter how challenging something seems, if I just keep pushing forward and approaching it from different angles, I will eventually get through it.

So yes, Engineering is tough, but if you make it through (and I fully believe that you can), the skills you gain will set you up for success in the real world in a way that not many other things can.

Now I know the majority of this post has been talking about how prepared you will be after you graduate Purdue, so I also wanted to leave you with my 5 tips for succeeding while at Purdue. Looking back, these are the five things that I did that helped me the most in making it through the ME program, so I hope they can benefit all of you as well.

Make friends in your classes and create a study & homework group. You can learn a lot from your classmates. They might be able to explain things to you in different ways, and it’s always better to suffer through homework and late night study sessions with friends.

Go to professor’s office hours (even if you don’t think you have to!) Getting to know your professors can be extremely helpful, not just because they can help you understand the material and better prepare for the exam, but also because they can help you find research opportunities, teaching assistant jobs, and even write recommendation letters for jobs or internships.

Don’t give up. I know this isn’t as concrete as the others on this list but it is important. Some semesters are going to be brutal. You just have to know that and hang in there and do the best you can.

Make sure to set aside some time each week for something you enjoy. Join an intramural sports team, a club, a fraternity or sorority, go to the co-rec, volunteer, etc. You have to make time for you and the things you enjoy or else you will burn out.

Reach out to Purdue alumni who are in fields or jobs you might be interested in. Talk to them about the classes they took, the research they did, how they got to where they are. This also helps to put things in perspective. Also, if you are anything like me, you don’t know exactly what you want to do after college, so this helps to understand the different opportunities and career paths you could take. I am always willing to talk to engineering students who are interested in my experience and journey. You can find me on Instagram (@businesswithjess ) or on LinkedIn (Jessica Traver Ingram). 

Jessica Traver Ingram, Founder & CEO of IntuiTap Medical

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