“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” is not just a cliche, it’s a fortunate dynamic for those whose livelihoods and missions are built around selling second-hand stuff. Used merchandise was once pretty much limited to hipsters in funky neighborhoods. Today, it’s gone mainstream, particularly among younger millennials and I-Gen-ers, who have turned a cottage…

Paul Charbonnet is the owner of Atmosphere Cinema. Atmosphere Cinema is not a movie theater, it’s a Baton Rouge company that shoots aerial video and photography, primarily from its fleet of drones. Paul founded the company in 2014. Atmosphere Cinema shoots video for the movie industry. Car chases, sweeping shots of landscapes, and other scenes…

Padma Vatsavai is founder and CEO of Vinformatix. Vinformatix is a software development company that specializes in designing and maintaining web-based applications, websites, and portals for public and private sector clients. Vinformatix designed the web-based system that 90,000 victims of Hurricane Harvey in Texas used in 2017 to apply for disaster aid. The firm also designed…

Just five years ago, Louisiana led the nation as the number one site to make movies, outpacing even California and New York. We attained this lofty position as a result of  a generous program of state tax incentives , which cost the state treasury real dollars. But what did we gain in the process? By…

Being a mid-size city in the Deep South — known as a “tertiary market” in the business world — Baton Rouge is not known for being an artistic hub. But the Capital City has a wealth of artistic and musical talent that is often overlooked and under appreciated. It’s not hard to find, it’s just…

Dr. David Carmouche is President of the Ochsner Health Network, the accountable care network of the massive Ochsner Health System – the largest nonprofit, academic healthcare system in Louisiana. It boasts 40 owned, managed and affiliated hospitals and specialty hospitals, more than 100 health centers and urgent care centers, nearly 25,000 employees and more than…

There are countless studies of equality in the workplace that demonstrate how unequally men and women are treated, in everything from opportunity to income. In entrepreneurship, we create our own playing field. In small women-owned businesses, women are the boss and they make a point of treating of other women how they would like to…

On this edition of Out to Lunch, Stephanie’s guests can make you look like a million bucks and feel like a million bucks. Blair Couatre, with her husband Dustin Clouatre, owns a business called Mera Salon Suite, a co-working space for aesthetic entrepreneurs. Mera rents out space in its state-of-the-art salon on a weekly basis…

In 2011, Mary Patricia Wray was a young law student at Loyola University Law School in New Orleans. Just three short years later, she found herself serving as the communications director for a longshot candidate in the Governor’s Race, a democratic state Representative from Amite named John Bel Edwards. You know what happened next: Edwards…

Stafford Wood is one of the most talented women in Baton Rouge, and the founder and owner of Covalent Logic, a full-service integrated communications firm that specializes in branding, corporate communications, graphic design, web design, public relations and crisis communications. Covalent’s clients, past and present, include hospitals, banks, state agencies, churches and nonprofit organizations. Stafford…