A Good Pour: Conversations About Good Work

The Sumner County Schools innovation center started with one conversation on the volleyball bleachers. Katherine Louw, executive director of the Carolyn Smith Foundation, was watching a game when a fellow parent said the schools could use the empty building on East Main Street in Hendersonville.

That building was the longtime home of STR, the hotel data company Randy and Carolyn Smith built from Hendersonville into a global business. When the company moved out in 2024, the Smith family hoped the space would do something good for the community. Katherine, a seventh-generation Sumner County native who spent 16 years in fundraising before moving into grant making, carried the idea to them. Today it's the Carolyn Smith Innovation Center, where students from high schools across the county sit around tables and work on real problems together.

Katherine, the show's first guest, is back with the whole story: how the deal came together, what she sees from her office inside the building, and why teenagers need room to fail. Kathryn shares the student-run marketing agency a group of high school students is designing there, and Katherine explains how a Christmas song shaped the way she's approaching this year.

For parents weighing a schedule change, nonprofit leaders, and anyone wondering what one conversation can start.

Growing without losing your identity is hard for a town and for a business. Gallatin Mayor Paige Brown has worked on that question from the chamber of commerce and from city hall, and she knows what she wants her hometown to keep.

Paige graduated from high school early so she could leave Gallatin, and she planned never to come back. She hosted a TV show in Tallahassee at 17, worked as a reporter and anchor, and came home to Middle Tennessee for a job at The Nashville Network. After the 2006 tornado hit Gallatin, she left television, led the Gallatin chamber, and was first elected mayor in 2014 by a narrow margin.

Kathryn and Paige talk about what newsrooms taught her about telling both sides, the phrase she uses when she shares an opinion, and how Gallatin landed on grit and grace as the heart of its brand. They also get into leading through hard seasons, why she still shows up for ribbon cuttings, and what rising home prices mean for the young families a growing town depends on.

This one is for business owners and nonprofit leaders watching their town, or their own organization, get bigger and wondering what should stay the same.

Two or three times a week, somebody asks Daniel Starr to connect AI to their work email. He doesn't say no. He asks what they're about to hand it.

Daniel is Managing Partner at Lightwire Solutions, a managed IT provider with offices in Decatur, Alabama and Hendersonville, Tennessee. The company has been the team small businesses call when something breaks since 2012, and lately the calls have changed shape. People want a chatbot in the inbox and Copilot across the files, and they want it on by Friday.

He and Kathryn work through what has to be true first. Who at the company decided which information is allowed into an AI tool. Why the business version matters and a free personal account doesn't belong anywhere near company data. What happens when a tool reaches files an employee was never meant to open. What it costs when the only copy of a workflow lives on one machine and somebody reinstalls.

This one is for the owner who has a tool switched on and no rules written down, and for the leader whose team splits between the people who won't touch AI and the people who'll paste anything into it.

Connect with Daniel: lightwiresolutions.net

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/lightwire-solutions

A Good Pour: Conversations about Good Work. Hosted by Kathryn Good, founder of Good Circle Marketing and Good AI Consulting.

Every new volunteer driver for older adults in Sumner County shortens a wait list that's 72 names long. Christine Martin, executive director of Community Life Bridge, joins Kathryn Good to talk about what happens when someone gives up their car keys in a county with no public transportation.

Christine came on seven years ago as program manager to get Community Life Ride off the ground, a volunteer ride program for older adults in Hendersonville and the rest of the county. She stepped into the executive director role in 2025. She's watched the driver team grow to about 85 volunteers, and she's watched the need grow faster.

They talk about why Uber and Lyft don't fill the gap (the car leaves while you're still in the pharmacy), how a new rider gets started with a phone call and a home visit, and why Christine says "older adults" instead of "seniors." She also shares what drivers get back from each ride, including friendships and riders who ask for them by name, plus the next needs she sees coming, from loneliness to phone settings nobody explained.

If you live in Sumner County and have a few weekday hours a month, this conversation shows you where they could go.

Learn more or volunteer: www.communitylifebridge.org

Follow Community Life Bridge: @commlifebridge

Using AI for tax questions works best when you know which parts to hand to AI and which parts stay with your CPA. Jamie McMurry has spent his career on the second half of that sentence, and he's clear about where the line sits.

Jamie moved to Sumner County from the Memphis area in 1998 to work for his uncle, whose Hendersonville practice dates to 1973. He grew it into McMurry Fox, added a Gallatin office, and in November 2025 joined national firm Doeren Mayhew. His uncle, who is 91, still comes in most days as a consultant.

Kathryn and Jamie talk about why a homegrown firm made that move, and what AI already does inside his practice, from checking returns to drafting requests for missing paperwork. Jamie walks through a Tennessee tax example where a generic AI answer misses the point, and Kathryn shares the one-line prompt that makes AI ask about your situation first. They also get into why Jamie says accountants have never been the tax collector.

This one is for business owners and nonprofit leaders who already ask AI their money questions and want to know when to pick up the phone.

United Way of Middle Tennessee becomes official on January 1, 2027, and the woman leading it has lived in Sumner County for 20 years.

Erica Mitchell grew up in Blount County with bare feet, dirt bikes, and cow pasture. She went to NC State and built a career in policy, then realized she missed people. So she took a grant contract at United Way with six months left on it. Her husband asked if she was kidding. Early on she called a meeting of state officials, business leaders, and nonprofits, and everybody came. Nobody in the room knew her name yet. They came for United Way's. She's now President and CEO of United Way of Greater Nashville.

Erica and Kathryn talk about why ten counties now share one United Way, what ALICE shows about working families that the poverty rate hides, and how more than 200 nonprofit partners get funded and connected. They also cover the December 2023 tornado that put United Way's boots on the ground, the Sumner County students who started Hands On Sumner, and who pays for Dolly Parton's Imagination Library books.

This one's for nonprofit leaders and business owners in Middle Tennessee who want to know where their time and dollars can go.

United Way: unitedwaygreaternashville.org | @unitedway @uwnashville

Sumner County: unitedwaygreaternashville.org/sumner

AI can help almost anyone build something now. But what happens when the thing you built starts handling customer data, running part of your business, or growing beyond what you actually understand?

Kathryn Good sits down with Jesse Lilly, longtime software developer and co-founder of Cambron, to explore how AI is changing software development and what businesses need to consider as they begin building with it.

Jesse shares why he's optimistic about the opportunities AI creates while cautioning against confusing a working prototype with a secure, reliable system. He and Kathryn discuss data security, backups, version control, platform dependence, documentation, and when it's time to bring an expert into the process.

Ultimately, Jesse's advice is simple: start using AI. Experiment. Learn what it's good at. But keep humans involved, follow the business practices that have always mattered, and don't mistake AI for the expert.

AI isn't something we need to fear, but it is something we need to understand.

Kathryn Good sits down with Misty Phillip, author of The Trojan Horse of the Digital Age and COO of Trilogy Works, to explore what responsible AI use looks like for businesses, families, and the next generation.

Misty brings a unique perspective from her work in AI and cybersecurity. She and Kathryn discuss why AI isn't neutral, the importance of privacy and governance, protecting kids from unintended consequences, and what we should have learned from the rise of social media.

But Misty isn't anti-AI. She uses it extensively to amplify her own work and believes those who learn to use these tools wisely will have an advantage moving forward.

This conversation isn't about choosing between embracing AI or rejecting it. It's about education, discernment, and knowing where your line is before handing more of your work, information, and agency over to technology.

What does it look like to prepare the next generation for AI without teaching them to outsource their thinking?

Kathryn Good sits down with Vicki Davis, educator and creator of Cool Cat Teacher, for a thoughtful conversation about AI, education, integrity, and staying human in a rapidly changing world.

Vicki uses AI in her own classroom, but believes responsible use requires more than knowing how to prompt a chatbot. Students need to understand how these tools work, where they fall short, and when AI begins replacing the learning it should support.

Kathryn and Vicki discuss AI-assisted cheating, unreliable AI detectors, AI bias, the danger of treating AI like a person, and why parents and educators should bring students into conversations about ethical AI rather than simply banning it.

Ultimately, this episode is about something bigger than technology: raising people with the critical thinking, character, relationships, and integrity to navigate an AI-powered world.

As Vicki says, “Your strength is being a great human being.”

I think this is a better length for Apple. It keeps the human element that makes this episode feel like A Good Pour, while getting to Vicki's actual perspective much faster.

AI doesn't fix chaos. Sometimes, it just creates more of it.

Kathryn Good sits down with AI coach, strategist, and builder Nicole Noonan for a practical conversation about moving beyond individual AI tools and building systems that actually work for your business.

Drawing from more than a decade in advertising and experiential marketing, Nicole shares how she went from using AI to support her own lean team to helping businesses integrate it into real workflows. She and Kathryn discuss why good processes need to come before automation, how to decide what work AI should—and shouldn't—take over, and why chasing every new tool can leave businesses more overwhelmed than when they started.

They also explore AI security, infrastructure, customized brand voices, and how thoughtful automation can give people more freedom to focus on strategy, creativity, relationships, and the work that matters most.

You don't need every AI tool. You need to understand the problems you're trying to solve and build from there.