It's Baton Rouge: Out to Lunch ItsBatonRouge.la

Safety in the workplace may not be the kind of thing most people think about, but if you work for a company with more than a handful of employees -- and particularly an industrial or construction company that involves heavy machinery or dangerous chemicals -- safety is paramount to what you do every day and is top of mind of important people in your organization. In fact, it's so important, there are whole categories of employees who do nothing but safety-related stuff and finding them and hiring them has spawned a cottage industry that is proving lucrative for one local entrepreneur.

Safety

John Cambre is president of ResponsAble Safety Staffing, a Baton Rouge Company that  provides trained safety staff on a contract, temporary or permanent basis to clients in the oil and gas, construction and general industrial sectors.

The company was founded by John’s father, Darryl Cambre originally as a safety consulting company in 2007. John, then fresh out of college, joined the firm and quickly realized that the greatest need their clients had was to find qualified employees in the safety field so he built out their expertise and changed the company’s brand in 2010.

In the years since, he has grown ResponsAble Safety Solutions into a national company with clients across the country. 

Skills

While safety is important in an organization so is performance, especially if you’re talking about a team or competitive organization. But a lot of people get caught up in the pressure of performing, or may not be maximizing their potential, which is where Aaron Pearson came in.

Aaron is the owner of iDeveloped Skills Academy, a training program that that works with athletes to help them identify areas where they can improve and develop their skills and potential. Aaron founded the company in 2010 and has since developed several spinoff ventures -- Elite by ECW, an athletic clothing brand that makes custom-jerseys for local sports teams; and, EazyTicks, a digital ticketing and operating platform for area schools. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In March of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic reached alarming levels of spread - more than our health care system was able to handle - so public health officials ordered state and local governments to shut things down. Aand our lives were forever changed.

It's strange now to think back on those weeks; how we adapted and coped, and what we learned about ourselves, our businesses and institutions and our communities. It was difficult and stressful, tragic for many, exciting for others, and creative entrepreneur’s took advantage of the opportunity to rethink the way we do things and find new ways of bringing people together and creating community

Jenn Ocken, a Baton Rouge photographer, business consultant, podcast host and writer, made a name for herself in a big way during the pandemic with her Front Porch Photos—portraits she took of families and couples and people with their pets on their front porches at a time when we were all living on our porches and in our yards.

The Front Porch Photos, shared widely on social media, helped unite the community and reminded us that we were all sharing the moment together.

Outside of photography, Jenn’s career has been thriving with workshops and consulting that helps clients live a more empowered, fulfilled, harmonious life. Her latest tool is called ThrivFOCUS- - an innovative journal that integrates goal setting, self reflection and organization. 

Sherin Dawud co-founded and co-owns the Nura Company, a local firm that specializes in consulting, marketing and event-planning with a focus on helping nonprofits and mission-driven clients in healthcare, education, advocacy and entertainment that want to make the community a better place to live, work and play. 

Sherin co-founded and co-owns the firm with Raina Vallot. Like Jenn, Raina and Sherin were inspired by the events of the pandemic to create the firm. Companies were looking for new ways to connect with people. They saw it as an opportunity to reimagine impact through marketing.  In the years since, they have worked with such clients as the Baton Rouge Youth Voice Initiative, the Baton Rouge Alliance for students, the National Fried Chicken Festival, which is held in New Orleans each fall, and Peace Over Everything.

Sherin originally teamed up with Raina to co-found Power Pump Girls in 2017, a social impact club whose mission is to empower women to connect and serve.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Much as we love to tout our fun loving lifestyle in south Louisiana, we have some of the worst health outcomes in the country – including the highest rates of cancer, heart disease, stroke, and infant mortality.

On this edition of Out to Lunch, Jim Engster sits in for Stephanie and is joined by two lunch guests who both head up institutions in Baton Rouge’s growing Health District. Beyond providing reactive medical care to these already existing health issues, John Kirwan, Rene Ragas and their respective institutions are focused on what causes these diseases in the first place and how to proactively keep our population healthier long term.  

John Kirwan is Executive Director of Pennington Biomedical Research Center here in Baton Rouge, which is renowned the world over for its focus on diabetes and obesity.

John himself is internationally renowned as an expert in diabetes and nutrition science with more than 30 years of research and teaching and a specialty in type 2 diabetes and how to potenitally cure it.

John came to the center in 2018 from the famed Cleveland Clinic, and in the years since has generated more than $50M in research funding and spearheaded the opening of Pennington’s obesity treatment center.

John was a guest on Out to Lunch  back in the pandemic era, when we were meeting on zoom. A lot has happened since then and it is great to see John in person. 

Rene Ragas is President and CEO of Woman’s Hospital in Baton Rouge, the largest birthing hospital in the state. Since opening in 1968, Woman’s has delivered nearly 400,000 babies and is reocngized for its Level 3 neonatal intensive care unit, expertise in mammography and breast and cancer care.

What’s perhaps less well known is the hospital’s research capabilities, especially in cervical cancer, where Woman’s has been a pioneer since the implementation of pap screening test used to detect this type of cancer.

Rene joined the hospital in 2022. He has more than two decades of experience as a healthcare executive, most recently as north shore market president for the FMOL health system.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. During the recording of this show the power went out in parts of Baton Rouge but the medics and Jim soldiered on! You can find photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.
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Sometime around 100,000 years ago, what we think of as modern humans started wearing clothes. In the centuries since, the outfits and accessories we people have come up with have evolved from utilitarian garments to elaborate expressions of our culture and creativity.

Clothes and accessories are fun, fanciful and define who we are. Baton Rouge entrepreneurs are building successful businesses that capitalize on our desire to define ourselves by what we put on our bodies and atop our heads.

Karla Coreil, co-owner of Chapeaux, a Baton Rouge based millinery business that combines 19th-century British quality and tradition with South Louisiana style and flair.

Karla and her partner in Chapeaux, Jenn Loftin, opened the business in 2022 and custom make creative head pieces for high end occasions like the Kentucky Derby and down home celebrations like the St Patricks Day Parade.

Chapeaux also hosts private parties, which they call Chapeaux Party, at which guests can make their own festive hats and head pieces.

Karla is an attorney. Jenn has a Ph.D in education and works in educational publishing. When they started the business they said they were worried about how to spread the word. Turns out, Chapeaux caught on so fast their problem now is keeping up with demand.

Joey Redditt is founder and owner of Jo Design Studio, a Baton Rouge couturier that makes custom clothing for men, women and children, with a particular focus on  special occasion dresses.

Joey has been designing clothes since 2010, when he was gifted a sewing machine. At the time, he had his own successful teeshirt company, Grab it Rabbit. After that business took off, he decided to try his hand at designing clothes. Today he has 35 thousand followers on Instagram, his own studio and a growing number of customers.

Joey works fast and Jo Design Studio offers to make bespoke creations -- sometimes in just a few hours. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Newton at itsbatonrouge.la.

 
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Technology has opened doors in so many industries and enabled us to do so many things we couldn’t even imagine in the past. At the same time, we’ve made things more complicated for ourselves, creating systems that don’t always talk to each other and languages we don’t understand.

On this edition of Out to Lunch, two lunch guests who are helping break through the clutter, with products and services that are enabling our tech systems to work for us more effectively - and helping businesses better communicate their messaging.

John Morello, is Chief Technology Officer of Gutsy, a tech firm that has come up with a better way to help companies protect themselves against cyberthreat. More specifically, Gutsy uses process mining – and we’ll get into that in a minute – to ensure that the various cybersecurity systems a complex organization has in place are talking to one another and doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

If John’s name is familiar to you, it may be because he was a guest on Out to Lunch in 2019, when he was running Twistlock, a tech firm that developed cloud-based cybersecurity solutions. In the years since then, John and his partners in Twistlock have grown that company, attracted new investors, and created the spinoff, Gutsy, to address a need they identified running Twistolock.

John is a 14-year veteran of Microsoft, who lives in Baton Rouge and is also a master diver and very active in coastal conservation. 

Kenny Nguyen is founder and CEO of ThreeSixtyEight, a Baton Rouge-based creative and strategic media agency that focuses on branding, marketing and advertising with a high tech, high energy super creative approach. The company’s origins date back to 2011, when Kenny and his friend were still students at LSU and started Big Fish Presentations, which specialized in public speaking and presentation services. In 2016, it merged with another local firm to form ThreeSixtyEight. In the years since, it has grown to include clients that include Alfa, Tomb Raider, and Compass Datacenters. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Newton at itsbatonrouge.la.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Healthcare is big business, and it’s only getting bigger. In 2021, healthcare expenditures topped $4B in the U.S. By 2028, that figure is expected to reach $6.2B.

Within this growing and rapidly changing sector, nurses play an outsized role. They comprise the largest component of the healthcare workforce, they're the primary providers of hospital patient care and they deliver most of the nation’s longterm care. They’re also helping to lead the charge in new ways of delivering care, creating companies right here in Baton Rouge that are reinventing the way nursing is done.

Renita Williams Thomas is a pediatric nurse specialist and the owner and CEO of In Loving Arms Pediatric Day Health Center, an outpatient center for children with medically complex needs such as congenital heart disease, traecheotomy, seizure, and genetic and neurological disorders, among others.

The center combines skilled nursing, education and therapy and enables children with chronic conditions to interact with other kids their age who may also be going through similar health challenges. Renita founded the center in 2012 after spending more than two decades in the field with the Southern University School of Nursing - where she earned her bachelors and master’s degrees in nursing - Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center, the Louisiana State Department of Health and the Lousiaina School for the Visually Impaired. 

Blasia Rivet is a Registered nurse and the founder and owner of Decision Critical, a concierge nursing agency that offers in home and mobile private duty nursing services in the Baton Rouge region. Services are tailored to fit patient and caretaker needs and include acute and chronic conditions, elderly care support, post op recovery, and more.

Blasia founded Decision Critical in 2014 to fill the need she saw in the community for a higher level of personalized care than one can get beyond the doctor’s office. Blasia is a native of Baton Rouge and a graduate of southeastern Louisiana university school of nursing. 

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Brian Newton at itsbatonrouge.la.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.