Thirty Under 30: Luke Sweigart

By Donna Heiderstadt

Growing up in a small town, Luke Sweigart said he was obsessed with the creative process. “When I was nine, I spent a summer emailing a word document back and forth with a friend in which we took turns writing chapters to a mystery novel,” he recalled. “At one point I was paid in candy to draw Spiderman on the fronts of my classmates’ notebooks.” Luke and his best friend also built entire worlds out of Lego bricks that took over his bedroom floor for months and won a blue ribbon in the county fair. 

Where did such eclectic childhood pastimes lead Luke in his adult career? At age 25, this graduate of James Madison University with a degree in Finance and Computer Information Systems is Director of IT at Chesapeake, VA-based Green Forest Cabinetry/Indigo Strategic Holdings. There, his colleagues describe him as “a tester, an early adopter and a thorough implementer, but more importantly, he is someone that is always ready to change, continuously looking for a better idea or better process.” In other words, no idea is too farfetched for Luke.

In fact, Luke’s most memorable project is architecting, programming and implementing the custom system that powers Green Forest’s production and logistics. “This one program tracks and automates nearly every part of our business processes, from product allocation and sourcing, production planning to order tracking, fulfillment and shipping,” he explained, noting that it also integrates into Green Forest’s production machinery, inventory systems, container tracking and cloud services. The results were nearly immediate. “Since deployment, our production team has been nearly twice as efficient, and we were able to reduce short-ships and fulfillment issues by more than 10 times,” he said.

Luke maintains that his mission is simple: Finding solutions. “In the corporate world, many people deal with inefficiencies or inaccuracies without the knowledge or power to improve the situation,” he said. “At Indigo Strategic, we are empowered to seek out the processes and solutions that make the team better.”

Proud to have moved to a new city and become a homeowner at age 24, Luke’s passions outside of work are neatly aligned with his corporate gig. He has a full server rack in his home office and spends lots of time working with open-source software and programming projects. “I am a chronic DIYer and get great satisfaction in attempting to learn everything about a new subject and using those skills to build something to improve my life,” he said. “I am also an avid gamer and have built computers for myself and a number of my friends.” 

While Maui is his favorite vacation spot — “In a single day I got to snorkel with sea turtles and hike inside a volcanic crater,” Luke said — global adventures are on his life’s must-do list. “I want to travel somewhere with a rich ancient history,” he added. “I enjoy learning about U.S. history, but our country is so comparatively young. There are places on this earth built closer to the era of wooly mammoths than the Santa Maria.”