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Just as a motherboard is the heart, soul and brains of a computer, Donna Gastevich is the 39-year-old motherboard for information technology in Indiana.

She gets a computer "chip on her shoulder" when you mention the brain drain of the best and the brightest technology students from Indiana. She can't help it. It's her job.

One smart computer "cookie" herself, Gastevich is president of the Indiana Information Technology Association (INITA), a statewide trade association for more than 300 information technology companies.

"INITA is leading efforts in the state to curb the brain drain," she insists. "Our efforts are funded by a Lilly Endowment grant and by Purdue University, where we have a satellite office. We are receiving national attention for our initiative which uses a strength-in-numbers approach to make students aware of the tech employment opportunities right here in Indiana."

And the numbers are beginning to add up. "When I (worked) at Purdue, I led a pilot of this initiative and saw retention of graduating students rise from 9 percent the years prior to 23 percent during the 1999-2000 academic year," she boasts. That's a whopper jump in light of the attempts by Austin, Boston and the other major tech centers to lure away our graduates to their versions of Silicon Valley.

For INITA's efforts, "I make the connection between universities, industry and government," she explains.

But don't think for a minute that Gastevich spent her childhood and early adult years glued to a computer.

Far from it. Her background is as varied as the uses for a computer.

Gastevich is a first-generation American whose Serbian father, Steve Koscica, was born in Yugoslavia. "He came here as a young man and worked in the Gary steel mills just like about everyone else I knew while growing up," says the Merrillville native of her late father.

"I called him 'Tata,' which is 'Daddy' in Serbian," she says adoringly. She has fond memories of his winemaking. "I remember stomping on the grapes in our garage!"

Her mother, Violet, is of Serbo-Croation and German descent. Born in Gary, Violet is a retired sixth-grade teacher who now lives in Hobart with her second husband, Mike Stankich. Gastevich credits her mother for being her role model. "My mother was a math and science teacher and I grew up thinking that learning was a form of play," laughs the brown-eyed brunette who loves calculus. "I didn't realize that learning was work until much later."

Gastevich is the youngest of three children. Brother Steve is the assistant principal bassist with the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra. He recently assumed that post, moving from the Hong Kong Symphony Orchestra. Her sister, Angie, was a physicist with Hughes Aircraft in California when she died unexpectedly at age 40. "She was incredibly bright and gifted," says Gastevich, gulping down tears and waving off offers of a tissue.

Backing up her memory files, Gastevich recalls how the family moved to Crown Point when she was in the fifth grade. A year later, the quiet, studious "wallflower" won the Worry Wart Award from her classmates.

At Crown Point High School, she was the valedictorian of her 1980 graduating class, the same class that presented the straight-A student with the class Perfectionist Award.

Always a dedicated worker, Gastevich spent summers as a math tutor while working a variety of retail jobs.

The focused scholarship student also worked her way through Purdue University, where she earned her bachelor of arts degree in just three years. A Spanish major, she graduated with highest distinction and Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1983. She went into Purdue's master of science in industrial administration program. 'Though she did well academically, she hated it. "It was the first time that learning wasn't fun for me," she bemoans.

At the same time, her father became critically ill after open-heart surgery. "My parents had divorced right before I went into high school. So my dad was pretty much alone. When it became clear that he had just a little time to live, I left the Purdue program and went home to take care of him. Their divorce was not a good split, so I didn't spend any growing-up time with my dad. But while I was taking care of him, I got to know him as a person, as an adult," she says, tears now streaming down her cheeks.

"I've always been so driven. So I thank God for giving me the good sense to leave school," she declares, cherishing the time she had with her father. He died of a heart attack four months later.

"It was a difficult time in my life. I didn't like the MSIA program and my dad had just died. It was the first time in my life that I had something unfinished. So I decided the best thing for me to do would be to just go to work," she says, shrugging her shoulders. A Purdue professor in retail management helped her enter the executive management training group at Marshall Field's in Chicago, where she remained for almost two years. "I left Field's and went with L.S. Ayres in Merrillville. I was the manager of a very large cosmetics department," laughs the fresh-faced woman who wears no makeup. "It was a million-dollar business, but for me it was a misdirection."

"I needed to heal from my father's death and from being so focused, so driven. Retail management was good clean fun. But I had left the path I was on and I very much needed to get back on another path. So I got re-involved in my own community of Crown Point by working in an economic development group called the Northwest Indiana Forum.

"That's when the Chamber of Commerce decided to cancel the Fourth of July parade because they didn't have the money or the people to pull it off," she hisses.

"This was a big deal in Crown Point and to me. I had grown up with this big parade. We lived on the parade route. To me, canceling the parade would be the death of the community and I'll be damned if I was going to let that happen!" she proclaims. "So I got involved to save the parade. My job was to raise money, so I was out selling ads. And we had the best damn parade that year that we had had in years. First it was saving the parade. Then it was saving some old buildings. And before I knew it, I was hooked! It was time for me to get back on track, to do the right thing, and to find my passion!"

And she did– by becoming the president of the Crown Point Chamber of Commerce, giving new meaning to "hometown girl makes good." Only 24 years old, the impatient dynamo immediately clashed with the veteran mayor when he wanted to have an historic structure demolished and turned into a parking lot. "I wanted to see the structure not only saved, but rehabbed. It was my very first instance of public disagreement and how you resolve something like this when there are sides.

"Trying to let me down easy, the mayor said, " 'Honey, this is just the way it has to be. And the demolition crews are on their way.' "

Time was of the essence, so she turned to board chairman and lawyer Vladimir Gastevich for help. He filed an injunction, stopped the demolition, and the building still stands today. It's a monument to their love because that's when she fell for the divorced father of three ... despite the fact that he is 28 years older than she is.

Born in Sapari, Macedonia, Vlad was a 5-year-old lad when his family moved to Gary. An American success story himself, Vlad operated Gastevitch Law Offices in Crown Point, Gary and Merrillville.

In the years after they met, she took a job as head of the LaPorte County Convention and Visitors Bureau. During her two-year tenure, she was the first recipient of a state Visions Award for Excellence in Community Development. Although living in Michigan City, she took classes at Indiana University-South Bend and eventually earned her master of public affairs degree in 1990.

She loved her job in LaPorte and particularly liked leading the county's strategic planning effort, which looked at community development for the next 20 years. Her stellar skills caught the attention of state officials, who hired her as a state specialist for community and economic development.

Based out of the Cooperative Extension Service for Purdue University, she moved to Delphi and lived in an Italianate home that was on the National Register of Historic Places. She worked for the state of Indiana almost three years before starting her own community and economic development consulting business.

In 1994, when she was 32 and eight years after she met Vlad, they married. They bought a summer home on Lake Michigan. "I was riding high and everything was right. I was married to the man that I love, we had just bought my dream house on the lake, and I was pregnant!" she exclaims. Unbeknownst to her, her life was about to crash.

"We had bought the house in late summer and one fall day, I was there by myself when the furnace kicked on. I was pregnant and felt myself getting sick. But I thought it was the pregnancy. I called Vlad who was working and planning to join me for the weekend. I told him I didn't feel good but it was probably just the pregnancy.

"He said, "You know, this is the first time we've had the furnace on. Call the gas company.' So I did and they came out, discovered carbon monoxide poisoning, locked the furnace, and told me to get to the emergency room. I was in the hospital for a while and they tried to do their best. But I lost the baby," she says softly. "We sold the house afterwards. I was in so much emotional pain that I just wanted out of that house."

She was ecstatic when she got pregnant again. "Thank heaven for little girls!" Gabriella "Gigi" Gastevich was born in 1995. "I had Gigi at a time in my life when I knew I wanted to take the time out and absorb, live and love, and make every day count. I became a stay-at-home mom and things were going great again. Gigi was 10 months old and taking a nap when I heard this big noise. I yelled, ÔBe quiet, Vlad, you idiot. She's taking a nap.' " Vlad was sitting at the kitchen table, but he never heard her. He was having a carotid artery episode. "He wasn't conscious and he didn't have a pulse but I got him on the floor ' no easy feat with a 6-foot-6-inch guy ' and called 911. That 911 operator really saved his life because she told me what to do one step at a time and walked me through giving him CPR," Gastevich recalls.

"In an instant, my whole world changed. When he was in the emergency room and I thought he wasn't going to live through the night, he started telling me where this is and that is. He was giving me the data dump, the disclosure before he dies."

The affable and charming Vlad, who now has a pacemaker, gives her full credit for saving his life. "My wife is a beautiful, dynamic, highly intelligent and kind person. And she threw me on the floor so hard, she bounced me back to life!" he laughs uproariously.

"Vlad needed to recover and the doctors ordered him to quit working. So we went through the process of closing down his law offices," says his emotional rock. "He survived but I had to come to grips with the reality of having the responsibility for an infant daughter and a retired husband."

That's when she took a job at Purdue University as a school development officer, a post she held for three years. They bought a house on campus where they were able to tap early childhood education majors for the gifted Gigi's intellectually challenging day care.

"While at Purdue, I got to work with Microsoft and Motorola and Intel, the corporate giants who have important strategic relationships with the university. I became the INITA representative from Purdue. I like being the connector between universities, industry and government. I'm good at it," says Gastevich. She became president of INITA in February 2000.

The family moved to Zionsville. Gigi is now a precocious 5-year-old who will be a first-grade student at Eagle Elementary School.

Gastevich's other brain child is the INITA Foundation, which will take aim at the "digital divide" that exists in the state. "It will unite 40,000 employees in the IT community in efforts to give back to the community," she explains. "The Foundation will be a supporting organization of the Central Indiana Community Foundation. The United Way of Central Indiana and the Center for Philanthropy are also involved."

The "new economy" has new rules and new tools. Despite this year's tech stock wreck, there are exciting "Windows" of opportunity for Indiana's female technology partnership leader, Donna Gastevich.