Four years after graduating, Kelsie Stanley still nurtures Quench, the nonprofit she started at USC to help bring clean water around the world. She’s got a full-time job, but with the help of current students Quench is finding ways to pay for projects in places like a Ugandan village.
Last year, Olympia Learning Center student Dwayne Alston was given an internship with Olympia’s Vulcan Materials Company. This internship greatly enhanced his time at Richland 1’s alternative school, enabling Alston to learn practical skills such as running rock quarry machinery and welding and also forming his career goals for the future.
The apprenticeship tree that luthier Gregg Lange has nurtured has spread far beyond his small violin repair shop on Elmwood Avenue. Lange has trained over 25 apprentices, including current head apprentice Marissa Pintz, in his 50 years as a luthier, and his latest shop, Palmetto Strings, has become a center for young instrument lovers.
Businesses of all sizes are vying to be featured in the wildly popular Soda City Market. The event takes over Main Street in Columbia each Saturday and looks to be a mainstay thanks to its wide array of shopping and entertainment options.
Alicia Holbrook was just trying to pass the time until her daughter went back to sleep with a TV show about alpaca farming. Five years later, her late-night idea has grown into Carolina Pride Pastures, a thriving alpaca farm boasting 20 alpacas and an educational field trip program.
A vibrantly colored sign at The Local Buzz in Rosewood welcomes “all sizes, all colors, all ages, all cultures, all sexes, all beliefs, all religions, all types, all people – safe here.” Stephanie Bridgers painted the sign and runs her coffee shop by this creed.
Columbia developer Richard Burts has built a reputation taking on projects, such as 701 Whaley and the Palmetto Compress Warehouse, that others said were impossible. Those successes have proved to Burts the value of historic preservation and prompted others to say he really gets it. He talks with us about saving historic Columbia.
Fifteen years ago, Ed Albritton was at a crossroads. He took the leap from a stressful mental health career to opening Ed’s Editions rare and used books in West Columbia. His son thought he was crazy, but Albritton now says it’s the best decision he could have made.
Jaco’s Corner, the 104-year-old bar in the shadow of Williams-Brice Stadium, is likely to pour its last beer this summer. The Jaco family, which has owned the Olympia neighborhood bar at Rosewood Drive and Bluff Road for three generations, is reluctantly being pushed toward the sale by financial and generational realities.
That famous movie line “greed is good” isn’t too far off the mark for USC professor Colin Jones. He’s trying to build a world-class finance program to go with the Darla Moore Business School’stop-ranked international program. The goal is to make USC students competitive for top-dollar jobs from Wall Street to Main Street.
