It’s New Orleans: Out to Lunch

Hosted ByPeter Ricchiuti

OUT TO LUNCH finds the country's most entertaining finance professor Peter Ricchiuti conducting business New Orleans style: over lunch. Each week Peter invites guests from the New Orleans business world to join him, sometimes for fine dining others for pizza. From CEO's to startups, managers, musicians, biomed needle-movers, Silicon Bayou success stories and entrepreneurs of all stripes put aside the elevator pitch and the talking points and actually enjoy themselves. It's business, New Orleans style.
You can also hear the show on WWNO 89.9FM.

Health ‘n Ed – Out to Lunch – It’s New Orleans

No matter which era of recent U.S. history we look back on, we seem to be constantly working on two issues healthcare and education. The debate at the center of these discussions is often financial. Where is Federal or state money for reform going to come from And if reform is privately funded, how are these fundamental requirements distributed equally In Louisiana and especially here in New Orleans healthcare and education are going down their own unique, and very different paths. New Orleans is the only city in the United States where one hundred percent of our public schools are charter schools. What started out as a post Katrina experiment has become a nationwide trendsetting model. The Executive Director of the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools, Caroline Roemer Shirley, joins Peter on Out to Lunch to discuss the new education business model that s becoming a model for other cities. In healthcare, although here in New Orleans we are spending millions of dollars constructing hospitals, the Katrina decimation of the healthcare system has not led to any sweeping city wide change. That, instead, is left to individuals. Like Lena Sendik. Lena is the owner and CEO of Balance Integrative Health, a new medical clinic that offers traditional Western medicine as well as alternatives, from acupuncture to Ayurveda. In the You Heard It Here First segment of the show Peter introduces Drew Goldsberry, an entrepreneur who is bringing back the aromatic Cinnamon Broom, an ecologically pure, non chemical room fresehener. You can find a more detailed conversation about Cinnamon Brooms with Peter, Lena, and Caroline here. Photos on this page taken at Commander s Palace by Cheryl DalPozzal