Karen White serves as secretary on the North Webster Tippecanoe Township Chamber of Commerce. She works at Caliber Design, offering interior design work. She’s shown in Caliber Design’s show room which features a line of teak wood furniture. Photo by Lauren Zeugner.

By Lauren Zeugner
InkFreeNews

NORTH WEBSTER —About 10,000 cars go through the traffic light at the intersection of Main and Washington streets in North Webster, and Karen White has a front-row seat to all the hustle and bustle going on in the downtown area.

White works for Caliber Designs, owned by Jason Meck, her partner. The business does remodeling, building, design and architecture and much more.

White is a native of North Webster. Her parents were high school sweethearts who graduated in the last class at North Webster High School.

They moved away from the area, returning when White was 10. She grew up on Tippecanoe Lake and now lives on Sechrist Lake, just a few doors down from where her grandmother lived. Being on the water has always been important to her.

“I never saw myself moving away,” she said. “I never had that feeling. North Webster has always felt like home.”

A graduate of Wawasee, White attended Ball State for a semester before transferring to Indiana University at Fort Wayne where she earned a degree in interior design.

“I would always as a kid be shuffling things, especially in my room,” she said about her interest in interior design. She also took an interior design class while in high school and loved it.

She got married, had two daughters, Kennedy, who is a sophomore at IU, and Morgan, who is a junior at Wawasee. She and her husband divorced.

She worked in the travel industry until COVID shut everything down. When it did, she went to work for Meck, offering interior design.

White said what she really loves about interior design is playing around with space and floor plans. Meck explained White is able to do 3-D renderings to show clients a variety of options when it comes to using space.

“You need to get the layout,” White said. “Even if it’s just visual. Color selection is huge. It’s just listening. Most clients know what they want.”

White also serves as the secretary for the North Webster Tippecanoe Township Chamber of Commerce. She said she took on the role because she wanted to give back to the community.
“I care about the longevity of the community. I want to see North Webster grow,” she said. “I’ve always enjoyed building relationships and meeting different people.”

While the chamber hosts a number of events throughout the year, White said she prefers to stick to the background and be the glue, helping hold things together.

Her favorite event is Dixie Day. “The amount of people who come into town is enormous,” White said explaining she loves how the town transforms for an event.

“It takes everyone to participate to make it happen.” And from her desk at Caliber Design, she can see all the action, from watching people bounce between the different stores on the block to having a great spot to watch the Mermaid Festival parade.