The heart of our mission is to find the amazing souls that breathe life into our communities. In the recent weeks, we’ve had the privilege to connect with some incredible artists, creatives, entrepreneurs and rabble rousers and we can’t begin to express how impressed we are with the incredible group below. Check out our favorite stories from across the Voyage family.
Cassandra Manning
One problem I found myself encountering, again and again, was how fiercely difficult it was for my peers to balance their home lives with their professional ones, especially if they didn’t have a plethora of support from their families. As I grew older, got married, started a family with my husband, and found myself tasked with caring for my aging Grandmother in my home, I knew returning to traditional retail would mean sacrificing my family’s complex needs for my career. This struggle began to gnaw away at me and I began to challenge this binary. Why couldn’t I find a way to both meet the needs of my family and chase my ideas? Read more>>
Luna Rey Hall
i always want to quit— writing is lonely and hard: i feel like i can never truly translate what’s in my head to the page, i spend too much time in solitude, i spend so much time worrying about words, and i just want to be with loved ones but i know i have something to say and only i can say it, so i must. Read more>>
Trevor J. Brown
I remember being a kid and my parents having a kitchen radio and it was always tuned to the oldies station. When I was young, I didn’t know the music was old, I just knew it was good. So I grew up listening to the best stuff… stuff like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Buddy Holly and The Everly Brothers. As I grew older, I found other genres and artists too and started rocking out to stuff like The Clash, Prince, Blink-182, Radiohead, Coldplay and Sufjan Stevens (just to name a few favs). I was in band and choir in middle and high school. I played in a crappy band. I was into journalists like Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather. They struck me as men with high integrity, and they were on television every night so I thought of them to be trustworthy. Read more>>
Kathleen Batalden Smith
Our husband-wife business began in 2010 when we returned to the U.S. after serving two years with the Peace Corps in Niger, West Africa. After living in a small, strongly-knit community in West Africa, we wanted the same for our new home in the U.S. We chose my family roots in rural southwestern Minnesota as our quiet place to call home. That’s where you’ll find us still today, where Justin enjoys the prairie views from the woodshop windows, and I’m thrilled to raise our kids in the wide open spaces of my childhood. Read more>>
Rachel Gilbertson
The first major shift was when I trusted an inner knowing when I was 18-years-old. I had recently moved from Minnesota to Colorado to attend college. Despite getting straight A’s in high school, I was struggling in college. I was working a lot at a job I really enjoyed when one day I got a feeling that I needed to quit to focus more on school. On a whim, I gave my 2-week notice that very day without a plan, even though I needed the income. One week later, my then boyfriend (now husband’s) younger sister died in a car accident. I was in Colorado, he was in Minnesota. When you lose someone, you are reminded how special and fragile life is. Life shifting events of loss and crisis can bring both overwhelm and clarity. I knew I would be moving back to MN. Read more>>
Kelly Lundquist
Nope. Not a smooth road at all. My biggest struggles, honestly probably both as a teacher and a writer, have been internal. While I’ve had real external obstacles–the demands of full-time work and being a parent/spouse/daughter/sister, etc,–my biggest impediments to writing have been primarily internal. I once heard the writer Josip Novakovich say that the most important trick a writer needs to perform is to find ways to keep faith with their own right or reason to tell a story. Maybe for some people, that sense of faith is easier to maintain, but for me, the belief that it mattered what I said or that I had the skills to tell my story in ways that I’d be proud of were pretty hard to maintain. Read more>>
Alida Winternheimer
I’ve always considered writing my life’s path, but I could easily have been one of those writers with a completely different career who also writes. I was an anthropology and theatre double major in college. I might have been an anthropologist, writing fiction alongside ethnographies or a playwright and director. But then life happened, as it does, and I ended up being an at-home mom before returning to graduate school. Even then, a decade after college, I was considering both anthropology and writing as equally likely career paths. Read more>>
Kristin Printon
My childhood involved being a military brat who moved a few times, and I mostly grew up in a trailer park, that’s how not from money I am. However, I was raised with a good work ethic, and started working at age 13. As a teenager, I took courses in entrepreneurship and financial planning, where I started to recognize that while money is something we all deal with daily, few of us have any formal financial education or training. After realizing that I had a natural talent for numbers, cash flow, and organization, along with wanting to build a career where I could create a real impact for those around me, I started down the path to becoming a financial planner. Read more>>
Amanda M. Ferris
Operating as a freelancer, then contractor turned consultant, I served clients however I could manage. It took a few years to find my stride, and even the failures proved to be more than the masterclass I bargained for. Taking every opportunity to level up my skills from workshops and seminars to books, coaches, and mentors, then taking risks to expand my professional horizons in different industries and projects led to generating a little bit of luck and discovering new paths I would have never considered previously. My business has evolved nearly as much as I have in the process, and I couldn’t be more thrilled about the future and what we work to create. Read more>>
Leah Murtagh
Like so many other entrepreneurs, my business “found” me as the pandemic began. I had sold my yoga studio in 2019, and had begun exploring ways to use my writing and coaching skills. I’m a teacher at heart and a gifted word wizard. After a short stint copywriting for a local digital marketing agency where I wrote blog posts for various agency clients (think pest control, roofers, cleaning companies, and realtors), I picked up my first private client. Read more>>
Tara Robinson
They were funny and meaningful to me in so many ways; the fact that the shopper knows themselves enough to write a list, but can’t quite overcome their forgetful nature, the shorthand we use with ourselves (some lists had items like “the good cheese”) the handwriting itself hinting at the whole human behind it. Read more>>
Chris
I didn’t set out to start a distillery—my professional path started with politics and law—but life has a way of pulling you where you’re meant to be. I wanted to do something different—something that would allow me to spend more time with my kids. That led to Du Nord Social Spirits. We started small with almost no money – just a $60,000 loan. Today we produce 6 spirits, and our bottles travel far beyond Minnesota thanks to the great partnerships we’ve built. Read more>>
Revna Dorian
Managed to build my first clientele and people would come in the shop and while enjoying their coffee, they would have a tarot, tea or energy reading from me. Finally, i opened my first e-shop, on my personal website named For BeLeaf where i welcome the members of my spiritual community. There, i have all the available listings, detailed blogs about many different topics on spirituality and so much more fresh content that it is yet to be uploaded. Read more>>
Christa Reed
I started building my portfolio by booking photography gigs during my free time. However, when my husband began a demanding job as a rural postal carrier that would often have him working long hours 6-7 days a week, life changed for us. Balancing my day job, building a business, and being the primary caregiver for our school-aged child became overwhelming. I took a deep breath and a leap of faith, quitting my day job to focus on being a parent and pursuing my passion for my photography business. Read more>>
LUKE BENOIT
My journey in golf has been remarkably fulfilling. I’ve had the privilege of meeting kind and brilliant individuals and have been fortunate enough to serve as the Director of Instruction at Interlachen Country Club, the top-ranked club in Minnesota. Four years ago, during the pandemic, I initiated RYP Golf as a personal project to help my students hit the golf ball farther. Since then, we have grown RYP into one of the most innovative and recognized speed training companies in the world. Read more>>
Catherine Glynn
Borne out of my creative chaos and need for greater artistic expression in 2016, I founded A.R.T. (Audacious Raw Theater) to gather artists from all walks of life, pay them a living wage, and teach and delve into the art of devised theater-making. Now, in our ninth year, we have a strong method for building original theatrical works from the ground up through conversations, writing, voice and movement work, and improvisatory theatre techniques. Throughout the seven-day process, I encourage the ensemble members to find a balance between creating new work and exploring the beauty of the Driftless of Southeastern Minnesota. Read more>>
Staci Gilpin PhD & Charity Anderson PhD
Staci: I’ve been passionate about teaching for as long as I can remember. Growing up on a small grain and livestock farm in rural Northwest Iowa, I was that kid who would line up my younger siblings and play “school,” creating lesson plans and worksheets and always jumping at the chance to be the teacher. That early spark led me into K-12 education, but I soon realized there was more to my professional calling than a traditional classroom. Alongside teaching, I felt the pull toward entrepreneurship—an idea that first began percolating during a business course I took at the University of Iowa. Even though I sometimes felt out of place (my graduating high school class was only 29 students!), I never let go of that dream. Read more>>
Rick Brandvold
Originally, two separate teams had dreams of launching their own breweries, but fate had other plans. We joined forces, navigated the highs and lows, and ultimately acquired the old DCR brewery. That was the moment Icewind Brewing came to life. In June 2020, during one of the most uncertain times in modern history, we opened our doors—not just as a brewery, but as a gathering place, a community, and a testament to what’s possible when you refuse to quit. Read more>>
