It's Acadiana: Out to Lunch

Hosted by ItsAcadiana.com

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Jun 2026

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About the show

OUT TO LUNCH Business over lunch. Each week Christiaan invites guests from Acadiana's business community to join him for sushi at Tsunami in downtown Lafayette. Beyond the foundations of the Acadiana economy - oil, cuisine, music - there is a vast network of entrepreneurs, small businesses, and even some of the country's largest companies who call Acadiana home. Out to Lunch is the cafeteria of the wider Acadiana business community. You can also hear the show on KRVS 88.7FM.

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June 14, 202630 min

A Different Drummer

People are looking for healing in places they didn't used to look. Acupuncture, sound baths, energy work — once dismissed as fringe, are now very much moving into the mainstream. That shift shows up in the numbers. Wellness is a trillion dollar industry in the U.S. Americans spend more than $6,000 per person each year on it. That's the broader current carrying a lot of what used to be considered alternative medicine into wider use. It’s also taken on a much wider meaning. My guest Peter Bulliard works where physical and mental wellness collide. He’s a healer, more specifically, he calls himself a master shaman.  Peter Bulliard was born in St. Martinville. He got a degree in art and later nursing, but spent years working as a touring musician, primarily as a drummer, before either of those careers took hold.  A brain tumor diagnosis in 1998 changed his trajectory. He began studying healing practices, eventually training with shamans and spiritual teachers across the globe, including a stint at The Four Winds Shamanic School, before transitioning into full-time spiritual and healing work.His services include healing sessions, master classes and workshops, property cleansing, personalized mentoring, energy training, death doula services and spiritual guidance. He's also the author of the book Heal Anxiety in One Day.  That search for the fabric of reality isn't just happening in wellness. It's happening in our closets, too — a pushback against fast fashion, mass production, and clothes that fall apart in a year. People are turning to the essential fabric of American style: Denim. Dark indigo washes and vintage-inspired silhouettes are back in style.  Selvedge mills produce limited runs and the process can produce one-of-a-kind pieces. The fabric has become a natural fit for boutique brands looking to offer exclusivity their bigger competitors can't.  If you’re in Lafayette and want a unique show piece, pop by Son of a Texan in Downtown Lafayette, owned by my guest, Sky King.  Sky moved often as a kid — rural Kentucky, Texas, Louisiana — and spent much of his adolescence at a remote church camp, which he says shaped his comfort with rural, small-community life. After high school, he skipped college and went straight into restaurant and food service work, which occupied much of his early adult life. It was his grandfather who first taught him to iron and shine his shoes, planting an early interest in clothing and textiles. After his father died about six years ago, Sky began reassessing his direction — and found his way, alongside his wife Katrena, who'd been taught to sew and repair clothes by her own grandmother, toward a business built around longevity and repairability. Son of a Texan opened in 2025. They specialize in selvedge denim and durable, small-batch goods from independent makers — clothing meant to be worn for years, repaired, and passed down.It’s good for business that people are always wanting more. Sometimes the trick is to convince them to slow down and maybe invest in something deeper and more durable, like spiritual balance or a nice pair of jeans. 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.

June 7, 202630 min

In The Beginning Was The Word

Most of us spend a good portion of our lives looking for the right words. The ones that explain who we are. What we believe. What we're here for. Some people find them early. Others take a longer route — through careers that almost fit, through places that challenge everything they thought they knew, through questions that don't resolve so much as deepen. My guests today have both built businesses around helping people find their voice. For Sarah Mary Toce-Donlon, that voice often comes from above.  Sarah Mary works in communications at UL Lafayette and is building a business as a professional speaker.  She offers speaking engagements, retreats, workshops, and leadership development . Her presentations weave together theology, philosophy, psychology, and leadership principles.  Sarah Mary grew up in Lafayette, and an internship with Homeland Security during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill led her to an early career in nonprofit work and disaster management. She later earned a Master of Divinity from Boston College — and that move to Massachusetts was a turning point. She describes the experience as one that broke her mind open, that challenged her worldview and deepened her understanding of faith and humanity. After years in nonprofit work and communications, she came back to her calling as a public speaker.  Her clients include Catholic school teacher retreats, corporate leadership trainings, church lecture series, and continuing education workshops for educators. Having a strong voice is pretty important if you want to be a good writer. We talk about it all the time in my newsroom. Voice communicates everything, and it’s just as essential on the page as it is from the stage. If you’re an author looking to develop a strong voice, you might need the services of a good editor like my guest Keondria Francis.  Keondria is owner operator of The Assembly Literary, a brand that houses her services as an editor-for-hire for independent authors.  Independent authors carry a particular burden: they are the publisher, the marketer, and the writer, all at once. Keondria tries to lighten that load. She offers manuscript evaluation, copy and line editing, proofreading, coaching sessions, and digital resources — including character development outlines she created after noticing how many authors struggled to build believable, relatable characters. Her editing philosophy centers on one principle: improve the manuscript without losing the writer's voice — an approach that blends African American Vernacular English with traditional grammar standards when it serves the story.  Keondria works with two to three clients a month, most of them repeat authors. About 95 percent are self-published. She's now expanding — adding a proofreader to her team, and planning to launch her own publishing company by end of year. Her first project will be her own novel. 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.

May 17, 202631 min

Diamond Tack

So, your family has a business. You grow up around it. You love it. It’s the center of gravity for your family life. But…you swear you'll never do it. You leave. You build something of your own. And then one day you look up and… Just when you thought you were out, they pull you back in.  That’s one version of the story anyway.  There's another where you just never really left. Either way, you inherit something: a lease, a reputation, a relationship with people who really know you through your family and what they do.  Family business is a big deal in Carencro. Charlotte Stemmans Clavier runs one that’s been in operation for almost 60 years. She’s the daughter of racehorse trainer Don Stemmans. Her family founded Stemmans Horse Supply in 1968 — one of the only specialty equine stores in the region, serving everyone from backyard horse people to the racehorse industry, with everything you need, as Charlotte puts it, from barn to bell. Charlotte has worked around horses her whole life. She started working at the racetrack at age eleven. By twelve, she was running the family store. She studied history and business at Tulane, worked for an attorney, and considered law school — before coming home.  Over time, responsibility shifted to her. After her mother's passing in 2002 and her father's more recently, the store became hers to carry forward. Today, Stemmans operates two locations: the main store in Carencro and a second on the backside of Evangeline Downs. Charlotte is also a notary public, deeply involved in Louisiana horse racing organizations — and the mayor of Carencro. Jewelry wasn't Troy Raxsdale’s plan. Troy grew up in Lafayette, served four years in the U.S. Navy, came home, and studied marketing and economics at UL — while working full-time in the restaurant business. His father started a home-based jewelry business and asked Troy if he wanted to help with sales. Troy said yes. They traveled together, selling out of cases, building territory — and eventually bought a storefront together. Then Troy struck out on his own. In 1999 he founded Unique Wholesale Jewelry, which supplies retail stores across the country. And in 2021, when a Lafayette storefront called Southern Jewelers came up for sale, he bought that too.  Southern Jewelers carries the range you'd expect — necklaces, bracelets, charms, custom designs — but what keeps the lights on is repairs. About sixty percent of the store's business is fixing things: resizing rings, resetting stones, restoring pieces that belong to somebody's grandmother.  It's painstaking work, and it's gotten more complicated as the market fills up with jewelry from online vendors and mass retailers, where what something looks like and what it actually is aren't always the same thing. There’s a lot to be said for just enjoying life for what it is. Maybe that’s the simple pleasure of riding a horse, or admiring a precious stone. But in reality, nothing is as simple as it looks. Somebody has to provide the tools for keeping a horse healthy and happy. Somebody has to procure, display and sell precious stones. Troy and Charlotte are both contributors to providing life’s pleasures and treasures. 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.

May 10, 202629 min

Cajun Certainties - Music & Real Estate

Megan Constantin sits in for Christiaan Mader on this edition of Out to Lunch Acadiana. When I say the name "Jourdan Thibodeaux…" You’re thinking of a musician. He’s hard to miss on stage at a festival as a fiddler and frontman for Jourdan Thibodeaux et les Rôdailleurs.  But Jourdan is also a business owner. In Henderson Swamp outside Breaux Bridge, Jourdan and his partner Scott LaGrange own and operate Cypress Cove Landing — a marina, dance hall, restaurant, bait shop, and alligator hunt outfitter.   Born on Cypress Island, Jourdan was raised speaking French by his grandmother, self-taught on a pawn shop fiddle. Everything he does is a kind of cultural advocacy. So you’re probably not surprised that he thinks of Cypress Cove Landing as a cultural hub.  And a hub it certainly is. Cypress Cove offers boat slips, houseboat rentals, guided alligator hunts, fishing, and weekly Cajun dances that regularly draw five to six hundred people. The venue also hosts music tour groups through SOKO Music Tours. It's deliberately family friendly — all ages, all parts of the property. For Jourdan, it’s a place that exists because he got tired of watching authentic Cajun culture get replaced by a commercial version of it. Cypress Cove is a mission driven kind of entrepreneurship.  But, as Jourdan will tell you, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Cypress Cove employs ten people, and Jourdan puts whatever the business earns back into the operation and the community. Real estate broker Beau Bourque, has always wanted to run something of his own. He grew up in New Iberia, studied business at UL Lafayette, and came out of school looking for work with an entrepreneurial edge. He found it selling beer and liquor for Crescent Crown Distributing — out front, making things happen. Then real estate called. Beaux joined a commercial team at Van Eaton Romero in 2011, built a niche in mobile home parks and industrial properties, and in 2020 launched Beacon Realty — his own commercial brokerage in Lafayette. Beacon serves local and national clients. It completes an average of a transaction every couple of weeks, which is impressive for a company that, so far, runs lean. Beau has brought on a second commercial agent and sees room to grow to five or six. About eight out of ten deals come through online leads, though Beau still makes at least an hour of calls every day and mails letters to prospective clients. The fundamentals, he'll tell you, don't go out of style. Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Tsunami Sushi in downtown Lafayette.You can find photos from this show by Alisha Zachery Lazard at itsacadiana.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

May 2, 202631 min

The E Wanderer

There's a version of life in Acadiana that most of us only see from a car window. We live in something of a paradise, it’s just sort of removed from your day-to-day reality. That’s in part because Louisiana’s natural beauty isn’t always so easy to see. Louisiana is flat. Famously so. We don’t have mountain vistas to behold.  So, if you want to really drink in Acadiana’s splendor, you probably need to get on the water. Don’t have a boat? Don’t worry about it. Reed Rudasil has you covered. Reed is the owner of Wanderlust Rentals, a startup that rents kayaks, right on the water. He grew up in Lafayette and studied civil engineering at UL. But he figured out pretty quick he didn't want to sit in an office. He tried landscaping, he managed a crawfish restaurant, he started buying rental properties.  Eventually Reed founded a property management company called Experience Louisiana, focused on short-term rentals that often put guests close to waterways. Renting kayaks came naturally from there. Many of the properties he manages sit on the water — and guests kept asking what to do once they arrived. Reed's answer was Wanderlust Rentals, Louisiana's first multi-point service kayak rental system. The concept is straightforward: kiosks placed by the water, stocked with single and tandem kayaks. Customers sign a waiver, pay, get a code, and they're on the water. No staff required. No waiting. The whole transaction happens just feet from the bayou. Don’t have a car to get the bayou? Maybe try an e-bike. They’re everywhere, in case you hadn’t noticed. The electric bike market in the United States was worth $2 billion in 2025 and is projected to more than double in the next decade.  Gerri Simon is a serial entrepreneur who’s cashing in on that market. She owns eBikes Plus, a one-stop shop for electric bike sales and repair here in Lafayette. She grew up in Vermilion Parish — not far from the water, and not far from the kind of hands-on problem solving that runs in Cajun households. Gerri's dad, she'll tell you, was an engineer who never finished high school. He taught her to build things and to work on things. She took that instinct to UL, where she discovered she was good at math, and came out the other side with a degree in mechanical engineering. She later got an MBA.   She went on to found and operate several businesses before landing on eBikes plus. A big part of her customer base is retirees with RVs who pack up the bikes to take with them on their roving vacations. But more and more people are turning to e-Bikes as their primary means of conveyance.  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.

April 19, 202629 min

Laying Down The AI Law

The advent of AI is either exhilarating or terrifying, depending on the day and maybe your last interaction with Siri. That’s because the stakes of the technology, at least as it’s promoted by its developers, is really really high. If what they say about it is true, it could upend human work as we know it. No wonder, then, that a crisis of trust has accompanied its rapid rise.  What happens when you take AI into rooms where the stakes are high and the tolerance for error is low? Rooms like courtrooms. Or patrol cars. My guests on this edition of Out to Lunch Acadiana are both building AI products for exactly those environments. And what they've each discovered is that the technology is almost never the hardest part. The hardest part is trust. Grant Schexnailder grew up in Lafayette — out near Milton — and comes from a family of entrepreneurs. His mom runs Cheers Cheerleading Academy. Both of his grandfathers ran their own businesses. Grant went to LSU for finance, then to Southern University for law school — a calculated decision, he'll tell you, more than a calling.  By day, Grant defends municipalities and government agencies against litigation. Which means he knows courtrooms. He knows juries. And he knows how much rides on who ends up in that box. When ChatGPT arrived, Grant saw something. Jury selection — one of the most consequential and least scientific parts of a trial — was a problem AI could help solve. In 2024, he co-founded Empath Legal with software engineer Shane Zhang. Empath is an AI-powered jury insight platform that aggregates public records and social media data to give litigators objective information about prospective jurors. Sarah Brasseaux is developing AI tools a little further up the criminal justice chain. She's Co-Founder of Blue Partner, an AI platform for law enforcement agencies.  Sarah graduated from UL with a degree in General Studies, and she'll be the first to tell you she has no law enforcement background whatsoever. Her co-founder Ryan Bourque does, however. He's the IT Director for the district court in St. Martin Parish. Over the years he read enough police reports to see a pattern. When AI started becoming practical, he thought it could change how officers work in the field. Together, they founded Blue Partner in 2023, with mentorship from Lafayette's Opportunity Machine. Blue Partner provides cloud-based AI tools for law enforcement agencies — a hands-free chat that gives officers real-time information on a call, a voice-controlled mapping feature, and a reporting tool that helps officers write in their own words while keeping their reports court-admissible. They're currently working with the St. Martinville and Duson police departments.  Sarah grew up in Wisconsin, moved to Texas at twelve, worked as a teacher, before relocating to Lafayette where she lives today.  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.

April 11, 202629 min

Keep It Simple Stupid

Here's something most of us won't admit: we have too much stuff.  It’s human nature in the consumer age. You can’t throw a rock in Lafayette without hitting a storage unit. And that’s the stuff that doesn’t fit in our homes. Clutter is the order of the day. In the business world, that translates into noise. We pile on messaging, saying too much when getting straight to the point is the best way to make your case in the market. Less is more, in other words. And my guests today are both in the business of less.  Heather Borges is a Lafayette native and registered nurse who spent sixteen years in healthcare.  The pandemic brought burnout. Burnout brought reflection. And reflection eventually led her somewhere she didn't expect — professional organizing. In March of 2025, she purchased the Lafayette franchise of Bee Organized, a national company with 40 locations across the US.  Heather now helps families and businesses declutter their spaces, navigate major life transitions, and find out what their home actually looks like when you can see it.  And her concierge services extend beyond organizing into errand running, seasonal home management, photo organization, and decorating. Every client starts with a consultation, during which Heather's team conducts a personality assessment to understand how the client thinks about their space and what needs to go.  Jaci Russo of Brand Russo wants you to cut out the BS and get the message sharp. She’s so serious about it, she trademarked her proprietary approach to marketing: Razor Branding.  Jaci grew up in Lafayette and nearly went to law school. She ended up in Los Angeles working with major ad agencies and building brands for clients like Ticketmaster and the Home Shopping Network. Family brought her home, and in 2001 she and her husband Michael co-founded Brand Russo, a strategic branding agency serving clients with multi-million dollar budgets. Ninety percent of those clients are outside Louisiana. Jaci is a Certified Professional Marketer, a co-author, and the host of two podcasts. 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.

April 5, 202630 min

Tell It Like It Is

Maybe when you're in trouble, you have someone to call. A family member. A friend. Someone who knows the system, or knows someone who does. But a lot of people don't have that. They're navigating institutions — legal, civic, governmental — that weren't really built with them in mind. And when no one's paying attention, things get lost. They need an advocate. Someone to speak for them.  Corrie Gallien grew up in Opelousas. She studied criminal justice at UL, then went to law school at LSU — not because she always dreamed of being a lawyer, but because she wanted to help people, and the law turned out to be the sharpest tool for that. She spent over thirteen years in the legal field. In 2024 she launched Gallien Law, a firm focused on personal injury and appellate work — including juvenile public defense and appeals for children in state care. Kids, in other words, who have no one else in their corner. Corrie is also deaf, and a survivor of domestic abuse. Those experiences don't sit in the background — they're the engine. In 2025 she founded the Corrie Gallien Collective, a platform for advocacy, public speaking, writing, and consulting. She's a published author, a Top Twenty Under Forty honoree, and a member of Leadership Lafayette. Advocacy can amplify voices or it can provide a voice to the voice-less. Like a building or neighborhood or sense of place.  Lafayette has been building itself for decades — new subdivisions, new roads, new commercial strips. And in the rush to build new, it's easy to lose what was already there. Once a building is gone, the story it carried goes with it. Denise Lanclos has spent years making sure that doesn't happen without a fight. Denise is a Lafayette native who spent her career in banking and finance, eventually serving as Director of Finance at the Cathedral of St. John. She became president of the Preservation Alliance of Lafayette in 2021 — a volunteer-run nonprofit founded in 1990 to advocate for the history and culture of this city. The Alliance was born out of a fight. In 1986, residents organized to stop the demolition of the historic St. Mary's Orphanage. They won — and that victory led the city to adopt its first historic preservation ordinance.  Today, Lafayette has 140 properties on the historic registry, and the Preservation Alliance is the organization making sure they're not quietly erased. 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.

March 21, 202629 min

Selfless Help

There's a kind of person you've probably met before. Someone who, no matter what their job title says, is really just taking care of people.  That's what they do. That's what they've always done. That’s who they are. The title just took a while to catch up. Susan Titus is a Lafayette-area entertainer, nonprofit founder, and — by her own description — a woman whose life has had more than a few unexpected turns. She grew up in Franklin, Louisiana, earned a theater degree and at one point had designs on medical school. Instead, she spent fifteen years in retail management and corporate America before walking away in 2015 to become a full-time face painter and balloon artist. Under the name Susie Q, Susan performs at roughly a hundred events a year — from birthday parties to corporate fairs to weddings — across Louisiana and as far east as Florida. But Susan's second act may be her most important one. Growing up in Franklin, she watched too many girls become mothers at too young an age. Her family even took in a pregnant teenager who had been kicked out of her house. That never left her. So in 2022 she founded The Confidence Campaign, a nonprofit that delivers hands-on hygiene education and self-advocacy workshops to young women. In 2025 alone, more than fifteen hundred girls attended a Confidence Campaign workshop. Frankie Dabney's career started in health and led her to a different kind of care. Frankie is originally from Georgia, and she trained as a nurse. But once she got into the work, she found the clinical side wasn't the right fit. A friend told her she had a gift for marketing. She listened. That pivot eventually led her to a niche: marketing for senior living communities. It turned out to be a perfect match. Frankie had watched her own mother suffer a stroke and saw firsthand how hard it is for families to navigate care.  Frankie spent years traveling the country and internationally for a marketing firm based in England that served senior living communities. Then a project brought her to the Vincent Senior Living in Lafayette — just for a month, to create a brochure. She fell in love with the city and the Vincent. So when the Vincent’s executive director offered her a job, she didn't hesitate. Today, as Community Relations Director, Frankie oversees all marketing and advertising for the Vincent — a resort-style senior living campus on twenty acres right here 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.

March 14, 202629 min

Social Scout

Here's a question every small business owner loses sleep over: how do people find out you exist? Word of mouth still works. Always will. But today you need more than that. The challenge is that most small business owners are already doing three jobs at once. Marketing is the thing that slides. The thing you mean to get to.  You need a presence — online, in print, somewhere people are actually looking. Figuring out where to start is daunting. What’s worth the investment? How do I know it’ll work? What’s the best media to buy for my business? Two decades into the social media era, getting noticed on platforms can still be a mystery.  Ashlynn Gary has built a business around solving exactly that problem. Ashlynn grew up in Lake Charles and came to Lafayette for college, graduating from UL in 2020 with a degree in arts and humanities. She's always been creative — painting, choir, theatre — and she still acts with the local theatre community today. In 2020 she started a t-shirt company called Leading Color, mostly to scratch an entrepreneurial itch. What she discovered was that she loved the marketing and branding side of it more than the shirts themselves. So she pivoted. In 2021 Ashlynn founded Ash Creative Collective, a social media management company that handles content planning, content creation, scheduling, and customer engagement — so her clients don't have to.  She also serves as media manager for Leadership Lafayette.  Don’t listen to haters. Print isn’t dead. With apologies to Mark Twain, rumors of its demise have been, well, somewhat exaggerated. In Lafayette, hundreds of businesses still rely on good old fashioned print products to sell their brands.  And they're not limited to flyers and newspapers. As Jennifer Brewer found out on a visit to Baton Rouge.  Jennifer was born in Lafayette, raised in Baton Rouge, and returned to Acadiana about ten years ago after marrying a local. She’s a real estate broker by day. But a few years ago, she and her friend and business partner, Krysten Ledet, spotted something on a visit to Baton Rouge — a beautifully produced print publication called The Scout Guide, displayed in a local shop.  Krysten and Jennifer were immediately drawn to it. When they looked into it and found the Lafayette market was still open, they bought in. The Scout Guide is a 100% woman-founded franchise now operating in over a hundred cities across the country. It launched in 2010 in Charlottesville, Virginia, and has grown to support more than three thousand small businesses nationwide. Each edition is a premium print guide — and a community in its own right. Jennifer and Krysten launched the Lafayette Scout Guide in 2023. This year, they printed 20,000.  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.