It's Acadiana: Out to Lunch

You know the cliche: Knowledge is power. Even Alexander the Great had a tutor while he conquered the known world. It helped that it was Aristotle. 

A good education is a strong indicator of future success in business and in life generally. So it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s a vibrant industry out there in preparing people for getting ahead in school. 

Modern education throws a lot of tests out at you. Want to go college? Take the ACT. Want to go business school? Take the GMAT. And that’s on top of the regular classes, tests and essays you’ve got on your to-do list. It can be a lot to manage. 

Garret Douet is there to help you. Garret is the founder of Open Door Tutoring, which offers tutoring services for students at all grade levels and for the pesky standardized tests. 

Garret is a student himself. He’s studying to be a mechanical engineer at UL. In fact, most of the tutors at Open Door Tutoring are students, many of them in engineering programs. It helps to be students, to teach students, Garret says. Garret is from Youngsville and founded Open Door in 2022. 

OK, so Garret’s job is to teach one student at a time. How about teaching 30,000? You could say that’s Mark Rabalais' job. Mark is the Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction for Lafayette Parish School System, the public school system here in Lafayette. Mark’s role is to direct how the system’s 47 schools teach. 

Public schools have always been a part of Mark’s life. His parents were public school advocates and his sister is an administrator. He began his own career as a teacher at Pineville High School, his home town. He moved to Lafayette to take a job as an assistant principal at Ernest Gallet Elementary School. 

Mark holds a masters degree in art from Northwestern State and has a doctorate in education from UL.

Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette You can find photos from this show by Astor Morgan. at itsacadiana.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Let’s say you’ve accomplished all of your professional goals. You’re at the top. Business is good. Life is good. What do you do? How about…something completely different? 

Success breeds success, but it can also stir up an appetite for new challenges. For high achievers, that can lead them to keep climbing after they’ve pushed that boulder all the way up the hill.

For Michele Ezell, the last mile of that climb was the pandemic. Michele and her husband opened Tsunami Sushi, the OG sushi restaurant in Lafayette, in 1999, adding locations in Baton Rouge and in New Orleans over the next two decades. 

But navigating the restaurant through the pandemic put a new burr in Michele’s saddle. In 2021, she and her husband sold the business and Michele started a new chapter in real estate. Today she’s a realtor at Keaty Real Estate. That’s a big change from running an enterprise with 240 employees to working more or less for yourself and on commission. 

Michele grew up in Lafayette and says her years in the restaurant industry have given her a solid edge in her new venture. 

By the time Alysson Bourque became an award winning author, she’d already been a teacher and a lawyer in the Louisiana attorney general’s office. Now, Alysson  is running Expound Publicity, a boutique PR firm that provides marketing and promotional services for around 400 authors. 

Alysson parlayed her own experiences writing and marketing the successful Alycat series to build a playbook for aspiring authors. She and her business partner Lori Orlinsky launched Foreword in 2020 after helping a fellow author shepherd a book to success. They designed a comprehensive line of services that help aspiring and even established authors get their works noticed and sold in the digital marketplace. 

Alysson is from Lafayette and has published six Alycat books. 

Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette. You can find photos from this show by Astor Morgan at itsacadiana.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Americans are going to get a lot older over the next 30 years. That’s not just an obvious statement about aging: the share of senior citizens in our country is projected to get much, much bigger. Researchers think seniors will account for 25% of Americans by 2060. It’s a population shift often referred to as the Silver Tsunami.

The impact of that change is on us now. And it’s putting a lot of pressure on the healthcare industry. There’s greater demand for care-giving services and treatment for chronic disease, and it’s getting harder to fill it. 

Caring for people is a stressful business, but a rewarding one. Susan Amos has worked in healthcare and senior care since the 1990s. Today, she’s the Chief Marketing Officer for Senior Helpers, a senior care-giving franchise she bought in 2017 and then sold in 2023. But not before growing the company rapidly with her business partner. Her Senior Helpers unit doubled its business in its first year alone. Today it cares for 115 people with a long waiting list. 

Susan also serves on the board of the Lafayette Council on Aging and on the advisory board of the Alzheimer’s Association. 

Lack of access to care is a big hurdle, particularly in rural communities. In St. Landry Parish, for instance, there isn’t a higher rate of cancer diagnoses. But there is a higher rate of cancer deaths. That’s in part because St. Landry is what researchers call an underserved market. The Mary Bird Perkins Cancer opened a location in Opelousas to close that gap.  

Mary Bird is a well known name in cancer care. It provides a wide scope of services with locations across South Louisiana and in Mississippi. Jodi Conachen is Mary Bird’s Chief Operating Officer. 

Jodi comes from the marketing world. She’s worked for Community Coffee, the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development and Women’s Hospital. She joined Mary Bird in 2019 as VP of marketing and became COO in 2023. 

Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette. You can find photos from this show by Astor Morgan at itsacadiana.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There’s plenty of demand for the good life. Who doesn’t want a taste of luxury or indulgence? And certainly, we indulge a lot in South Louisiana. "You only live once" could be easily the state motto. 

Why not? We’re blessed to have plenty of good life to indulge here. So much so, that we yearn for it when we’re gone. For all those expats out there — and there are plenty — a taste of home means seafood. And it doesn’t get much more indulgent than oysters. 

Oysters

The dirty secret of oysters, Boyer Derise likes to say, is that you’re selling butter. And Boyer is selling butter nationwide. The Bayou Carlin Oyster Company ships flash frozen Louisiana Oysters around the country and sells locally in grocery stores. The kits come in a variety of flavors: Garlic Parmesan, Andouille Cream Cheese, Roasted Jalapeno Cheddar and more. 

It all began as an e-commerce concept for Boyer to add on to his prepped food brand Good Eats Kitchen. But he quickly found the good money was in wholesale, which makes up more than 90% of his business. In 2022, he closed Good Eats to devote more time to Bayou Carlin.  

Cigars

After you’ve put away some grilled oysters and a couple of beers, it’s time to kick back and relax. For a lot of folks, a fine cigar is the perfect after-dinner treat. 

Leona Bruno got a taste for cigars when she joined a motorcycle club. One night, she wanted a cigar to unwind, but didn’t feel like heading to a cigar lounge. A business idea was born: The Bearded Lady Mobile Cigar Wagon. 

The cigar wagon is a mobile cigar experience. Like a mobile bartending service, it offers packages of cigar lines that can be paired with events — weddings, parties, company functions, that sort of thing. 

Leona is self-taught about cigars, and coaches clients about the experience they want. Packages include a pop-up cigar lounge with cut and light services. All of them come with a selection of high quality cigars. The most popular? The Cuban Monte Cristo.

Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette. You can find photos from this show by Astor Morgan at itsacadiana.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Over the last few decades, we’ve come to understand the role of private enterprise differently. There’s a call to be corporate citizens, and responsible ones at that.

Responsibility can be good business. It’s part of why big energy companies have begun to shift their marketing and their products toward sustainability. Think of it this way: You need a planet to run a business on. 

We’ve even put a number on it because…capitalism. The World Bank estimated in 2011 that the combined value of the Earth’s natural resources — forests, rivers, wetlands, wildlands, farms and more — at $44 trillion. 

So it can’t hurt to pay attention to how your business impacts the environment and those resources. That shift has been underway for years at the major corporate level, but Julie Esta is leading a much smaller operation in that direction as Sustainability Manager at Industrial Safety Solutions, a firm that helps oil and gas companies comply with environmental and safety requirements. 

We talked in 2021 with Founder & President Ray Flores and Julie joined the company in 2023 after working in business development for a digital literacy company and creating her own line of healthy seasonings. Her job is to help ISS develop techniques that can reduce their own carbon footprint and that can be marketed to other companies. 

Julie grew up in Sunset and now lives in Scott. 

Caroline Jurisich has made a career of helping universities be more inclusive, particularly of people with disabilities. From 2017 to 2023, Caroline directed UL’s LIFE program, which offers education for young adults with cognitive disabilities. 

She’s since moved on from that job to launch the Quad, an enrichment center serving the same community. 

The Quad offers counseling, speech therapy, hands-on community service projects, a coffee bar, a cooking lab and a clubhouse. It’s a membership-based program that puts many of the most-needed services under one roof. 

Caroline holds a doctor of education from UL and was recognized by the university as a Champion of Diversity in 2020. Caroline grew up in Bossier City and now lives in Lafayette.

Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette. You can find photos from this show by Astor Morgan at itsacadiana.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What does it mean to invest in a community?  Big economic development projects are usually sold that way.  And if you’re cynical, it can sound a bit like hot air. If a big company puts a new factory in your town, it might bring jobs, but the investment is for the company and its shareholders. 

Okay, but that’s not a bad thing. That’s capitalism. But community investment has long been the purview of philanthropy. The dawn of big philanthropy was tied to robber barons. Names like Carnegie and Rockefeller are synonymous with both greed and generosity. 

Big name donors are still the most visible philanthropists, but more and more communities are investing in themselves, pooling contributions from donors big and small into community foundations. 

Today there are more than 900 community foundations operating in the U.S., pumping billions of dollars each year into their communities. The third largest community foundation in Louisiana is housed in Lafayette — the Community Foundation of Acadiana. 

In 2022, the foundation made over $16 million in gifts to causes in its eight-parish region. The foundation was started in 2000 and Missy Bienvenu Andrade is CFA’s second ever director. She took the helm in 2022. 

Missy grew up in Lafayette and spent 10 years as dance choreographer before starting her professional life as a pharmaceutical rep and later moving into community work with a job at One Acadiana, the regional chamber of commerce. She moved into nonprofits with jobs at the Boys and Girls Club, becoming Chief Impact Officer for the Boys and Girls Club of Louisiana in 2021.  

The Community of Foundation of Southwest Louisiana, which covers metro Lake Charles, was founded in 2008. Today, it’s helmed by Sara Mcleod Judson. 

The Foundation has become an important part of recovery efforts in the aftermath of Hurricanes Laura and Delta, both as a channel for local dollars and for national philanthropy. David Philo, Yahoo’s co-founder, gifted $2.5 million to the foundation to help rebuild Lake Charles. That money is the cornerstone of a 50-year master plan. 

Sara is a Lake Charles native and spent time working in public relations before moving into the nonprofit space. She’s been the director of the Community Foundation of Southwest Louisiana since 2013.

Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette. You ca find photos from this show by Astor Morgan. at itsacadiana.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Americans spend about 300 hours a year in a car. That translates roughly into about 14,263 miles annually, at least according to a few minutes of Google research.

Take the specifics with a grain of salt but nobody would would dispute that we do a lot of driving. 

Yes, traffic is bad in Lafayette, but mostly compared to how we think we ought to be living in a medium-sized town, not necessarily by a universal standard. By comparison, picture Atlanta during rush hour, or Los Angeles any time. But, nonetheless there’s no denying traffic, however long you spend in it, can feel like time wasted. 

And that’s the appeal of the self-driving car. To some extent, it feels like we’ve been on the edge of a breakthrough with that technology for a decade. But here we are, driving our cars with our hands like Neanderthals well into the 21st century. 

Colin Grussing hasn’t given up on the idea. Far from it. In fact, he’s busy "planting flags" as he likes to say, with his latest venture: aftermarket self-driving devices he calls "Palanquins" — named after the mode of royal transportation in the ancient world. 

Colin uses an open-source technology to retrofit self-driving devices for road trip driving. (This stuff isn’t ready for your trip to the grocery store.) Colin used open source tech to equip three RVs and a Toyota minivan. He hopes to break into the trucking market and has concepts for another 50 applications of self-driving technology. 

And no, he doesn't live in Silicon Valley, Colin grew up and lives right here, in Lafayette. But he's no stranger to epic business ventures. He first made a name for himself with 52businesses, a project in which he started a new business a week for a year. 

Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette. You can find photos from this show by Astor Morgan at itsacadiana.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The more we learn about the human body, the less we seem to actually know.

Medicine is always playing catch up with its own science. And more and more, the industry is moving toward individualized care, armed with metrics that help us stay on top of our wellness. 

What if we could catch a problem before it happens? If that’s the goal, we’re not talking about preventative medicine; we’re talking about predictive medicine. 

Marc Landry launched Healthy Heart Clinics and Cardio Care after he lost his parents. He wanted to create a company that could help patients manage their own cardio care and make sure that it fit what they needed.

Healthy Heart Clinics is a primary care practice. It offers cardiac care, wellness visits, health coaching and remote health monitoring. And Cardio Care is an online management tool for patients with chronic illnesses. It links technology and remote care to help patients keep track of their wellness between visits. The program comes with software that helps patients track their biometrics and prescription records. 

Marc is originally from Scott and worked for 30 years in Dallas. He moved back to Lafayette in 2018, founding Healthy Heart in 2020. 

Sometimes diseases are written right into our genetic code. Congenital defects can hide out for decades before becoming serious ailments. The early signs might be there, but with more than 7,000 rare genetic disorders known to medicine, it’s tough for even the best doctors to keep track of. Enter, ThinkGenetic.

Dawn Laney is the founder and chief genetic officer for Think Genetic, based in Lafayette. The idea for the company came from a genetic illness identified in Dawn’s own family. Her dad and aunt both suffered from non-fatal aneurysms. Dawn went looking for a genetic link and found an opportunity. 

Dawn and her father founded ThinkGenetic in 2014. The company offers two basic products. They help researchers locate people at risk for rare conditions for clinical trials. And they help physicians narrow down options to refer patients for more testing or diagnosis. The goal is to cut down the amount of time it takes to achieve a diagnosis. The company also connects patients with rare diseases with advocacy groups and with genetic counselors. 

Dawn is a genetic counselor herself. She's Director of the Genetic Clinical Trials Center at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.

Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette. You can find photos from this show by Giada Morgan at itsacadian.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dancing is a big part of our Acadiana culture. People in Acadiana dance like nobody’s watching; specially when everybody’s watching. 

But dance can be more than an expression of tradition or culture. It can be therapeutic. You can look at a couple dancing as a microcosm of their relationship or you can look at yourself dancing as a way of getting in tune with your body. 

“Whatever the issues are in a relationship, they’re gonna come up through dance,” says Caroline Helm. 

Caroline Helm Huval is a social worker and she applies that philosophy in her practice both as a counselor and as a dance instructor at her business, Cajun Dance Therapy. She runs couples therapy sessions that explore relationship dynamics through dance. Couples learn to 2-step, waltz, jitterbug and zydeco. But what couples really learn is how to relate to each other. 

Caroline grew up in Lafayette. So we know she’s a fabulous dancer! 

As we observed earlier, dancing isn’t just therapy for you and your partner, it can be a way of getting in tune with yourself. 

Carol Petijean discovered belly dancing 20 years ago and found it could be a powerful way to escape stress. For the last fifteen years, she’s taught belly dancing at Oasis Belly Dance in Lafayette. The school specializes in Polynesian and Middle Eastern styles, but she also teaches American Cabaret, Egyptian Raqs Sharki and improvisational tribal styles too.

Belly dancing is inclusive, Carol says. Anyone can do it and it offers everyone a chance to just let go. Oasis has about 90 dancers and they perform often at nonprofit events around town. 

Carol was born in Rayne. And she also works as a bank fraud investigator.

Out to Lunch Acadiana was recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette. You can find photos from this show by Astor Morgan at itsacadiana.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Acadiana is a culture obsessed with itself. That’s not unique, really. Regional pride is a thing in most places, wherever you go. 

A strong cultural identity — or more precisely, identities — can create a powerful market for artists who can tap into it.  The ability to sell on social media or through e-commerce has only extended that reach. And that goes for pretty much any medium. 

There’s the more classical approach of an artist, like Herb Roe. Herb is best known for his rich, textured and detailed depictions of pastoral Acadiana — scenes of country Mardi Gras, po-boy shops and boucheries. 

Herb Roe grew up in Ohio, where he hooked up with muralist Robert Dafford and landed in Lafayette. Herb painted murals for 10 years before settling into a studio in Freetown to focus on his own work under the business moniker, Chrome Sun. Since then, he’s built a career tapping into the local and national obsession with Acadiana.

Acadiana’s cultural landscape is a fitting subject for oil painting — how about a chainsaw? That’s one way sculptor Kelly Guidry has cut his own path in the art world. 

Kelly is a mixed-media artist. He works in metal and wood, and works in conversation with modern and traditional tokens of local life. He collects his work under the business name Modern Primitive, a brand concept he came up with while working in advertising. 

Kelly left the ad business to go work full time as a sculptor. Today, he and his wife Robin work side by side to sell his work and others at a gallery in Breaux Bridge called the Pink Alligator. Kelly’s work is also sold online, by commission or at local festivals.

Johanna Divine sits in for Christiaan Mader as host of this episode of Out to Lunch Acadiana, recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette. You can find photos from this show by Astor Morgan at itsacadiana.com.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.