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

If you subscribe to an online news service, you’re used to getting notifications about news stories the algorithm thinks might impact you. In Southeast Louisiana, you’ll pretty regularly see variations on the headline, “Sea Level Rise Threatens Coastline” or “Louisiana Loses a Football Field of Wetlands Per Hour.”

If you’re like most people, you keep scrolling. Or, maybe you read the article, shake your head at the dire situation, but shrug it off because, well, what can you do? 

The reason you can afford to take a laissez faire attitude toward our disappearing coastline and wetlands, is because there are people who don’t. There are people working every day, here in Baton Rouge, to preserve our piece of Planet Earth.

Darius Bonton is the founder, owner and principal of Bonton Associates.

Bonton Associates are an engineering company focused on designing and implementing infrastructure and transportation systems that allows us to build what needs to be built, and get where we need to go, without destroying the environment in the process.

To the contrary, Bonton is all about delivering solutions to water and transportation issues that do more than just comply with environmental regulations, they actually improve our existing way of life.

If you’re looking for an organization whose name doesn’t pull any punches, how about the Coalition To Restore Coastal Louisiana.

“The Coalition” the title refers to is a wide range of organizations and people who partner to do an even wider range of activities to save our coast - from planting grasses in marshlands to giving expert advice to local, state and federal organizations.

The Coalition is Louisiana’s first statewide nonprofit organization dedicated to coastal restoration. They started out in 1988, and since March 2024 Ethan Melancon has been their Advocacy Director.

In 1789 the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge published a poem called The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner. You might not be familiar with the poem, but you probably know a line or two from it. Namely, “water water everywhere / Nor any drop to drink.”

The poem is about a sailor stranded at sea, ironically, dying from dehydration while being surrounded by water. The theme of the poem is nature’s indifference to human suffering.

Whether or not nature is indifferent to us, we humans continue to do our best to adapt to the elements, and even downright defy them.

We owe our very existence in Southeast, and Southwest, Louisiana to past generations’ willingness to drain swamps, build levees, and bounce back from hurricanes.

In our current generations, it’s the work of companies like Bonton Associates and organizations like Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana who are continuing to organize, design and execute strategies for containing the power of nature that allow us to remain here, and hopefully will for generations to come.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs On the Boulevard. Jim Engster sits in as host for Stephanie Riegel. More info about Out to Lunch Baton Rouge is at itsbatonrouge.la.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Arts and music are essential elements of any real community. They unite us, bring out the human spirit and remind us of the incredible gifts and talents and good things we can do when we let our creativity fly.

Baton Rouge isn’t particularly known as a high brow kinda place as far as the arts are concerned but there are plenty of hidden gems, and you don’t have to scratch the surface hard to find outlets and venues that are showcasing the best of the musical, visual and performing arts.

Jason Langlois is Executive Director of the Manship Theater, which opened in 2005 on the ground floor of the Shaw Center for the Arts. The building was transformative for downtown Baton Rouge and the theater was its anchor tenant, bringing new cultural offerings to the heart of the city that include musical performances, dance, poetry, plays and movie nights. 

Jason grew up in Austin and New Orleans and has lived in Baton Rouge since 2001 when he was a student in the EJ Ourso college of business. He has been at the Manship since 2009, started their Films at Manship program and more recently the standup comic series.

Over the years Jason has helped grow the theater and put it on more stable financial footing, bringing in new audiences with ever more offerings. 

Raudol Palacios is Artistic Director and cello and ensemble teacher at Palacios House of Arts, a local family run nonprofit that offers lessons in the musical, visual and performing arts to people of all ages – and regardless of their ability to pay.

Raudol and his parents, Gloria Ruiz and Manuel Palacios, started the Palacios House of Arts in 2018, as a way to bring their love of music and arts to the community. The family is originally from Cuba and in 2015 the family moved to Baton Rouge, when Raudol was studying music at LSU. Today, he is a professional musician and also helps run the school with his parents, teaching classes, organizing events and programs and other cultural activities that engage community participation.

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.

Louisiana ranks last in a lot of lists but one area where the state is pretty close to the top is in the number of lawyers per capita. That’s right, Louisiana is 11th among the 50 states in terms of the number of attorneys in the state. While that means you won’t have trouble finding someone should you need to file a lawsuit or negotiate a contract or divorce your spouse – it’s probably a safe bet that they’re not necessarily all good lawyers or happy lawyers because, let’s face it – it’s a difficult, stressful and challenging profession that requires a lot of expertise.  And in matters where expertise is required, more is not necessarily better.

Lexlee Overton is a Baton Rouge attorney who has found a way to help her colleagues be better, perform better for their clients and feel happier in their profession. Lexlee is a seasoned lawyer, executive leadership expert and peak performance specialist. And melding all this together, Lexlee has created a coaching method, for lack of a better term, that she calls Mind Over Law.

Mind Over Law offers team building workshops, one-on-one counseling and training sessions, coaches legal teams, and leads a national leadership program for women.

Lexlee developed this method after spending more than two decades in the legal profession and experiencing the kind of burnout she now tries to help her clients overcome. 

While Lexlee is coaching lawyers, Lauren Temple is coaching people on how to maximize their fitness and physical performance – which brings mental well-being along with it – through her two boutique fitness clubs.

Lauren's two fitness clubs, which are both on Perkins, are called Tone BR. The two clubs are a merger of what used to be Tread BR and Pilates Plus.

Lauren is a native of Baton Rouge and single mom, raising two daughters, who experienced a terrible injury and had to learn how to walk again. After overcoming those challenges, Lauren was determined to run her own fitness studios. In the years since, she has grown the clubs into successful and growing businesses  in a market that is notoriously competitive for gyms and fitness club operators. 

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.

Baton Rouge often gets a bad rap for being a belt and suspenders kind of town, where people eat in chain restaurants and go to movie theaters and don’t do the kind of interesting, unique things – be they related to food, music or festivals – that are so characteristic of some fo sthe state’s other big cities. But its’ simply not true! And bright young entrepreenuers are taking risks to dispel those misconceptions.

Bread

Steven Gottfried is owner of the St. Bruno Bread Company, a commercial artisan bread bakery in Baton Rouge that delivers fresh bread daily to local restaurants and more than a dozen grocery stores.

St Bruno is a wholesaler and doesn’t have a storefront. And that's intentional, in furtherance of Stephen’s mission to raise the standard of daily bread and elevate the experience of eating everyday foods.

Steven is a native of Baton Rouge who learned the craft from chef Gary Darling in Covington before spending several years honing his skills first in San Francisco and then at Bellgarde Bakery in New Orleans. He went out on his own in 2017, originally in New Orleans, but the COVID pandemic changed those plans, and since late 2021, St. Bruno has been based in Baton Rouge.

The upside of Covid is that we in Baton Rouge can now get a variety of St Bruno breads including sourdough, French baguette and po-boy loafs. 

And now, the Circus!

Laura Siu Nguyen is an event planner and communications professional who is also the founder of Night Market BTR, a new annual event that celebrates Asian American history in the style of a Lunar New Year festival.

Laura created Nigh Market BTR to celebrate culture, community and creativity in Baton Rouge and brings people of Asian American heritage together. Laura is a native of Honduras, who came to Baton Rouge more than 15 years ago to attend graduate school and never left. In the years since, she has been involved in helping launch and promote a variety of events and activities – including her own. 

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

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.