There’s a line I keep hearing from people who run small businesses in Baton Rouge. It goes something like: I didn’t plan this. I was doing something else, I saw a gap, and I walked through it.

Norisha Kirts Glover has a degree in mass communication and an MPA. She spent years in nonprofit fundraising in Washington, D.C. and California. In 2015 she walked through a door marked “commercial construction” — an industry where women and people of color were barely present — and decided that was exactly where she needed to be.

Norisha is originally from the Alexandria area. She came to LSU for college and stayed. In 2015, an opportunity came along to enter commercial construction. She researched it, noticed that women and people of color were dramatically underrepresented, and decided to launch NRK Construction anyway — or maybe because of that. The firm picked up early traction after the 2016 floods, working through extensive residential renovation before moving deeper into commercial work.

NRK is intentionally small — three to four employees, about $3 million in annual revenue, with two major projects at a time. Norisha says that’s not a limitation; it’s a choice. Her superintendent is on every job site and every client meeting comes with an agenda. Norisha’s aiming next at healthcare, education and federal contracting.

Ralph Whalen grew up in New Orleans, studied English at Dartmouth, and has tried to leave Louisiana several times. Chicago, New Hampshire. He keeps coming back.

Ralph started his career implementing Epic — the electronic health records platform that runs inside most major hospitals — and worked his way up to Senior Vice President at a healthcare IT firm called Divurgent. In September 2020, he launched Benzait, a consulting firm that helps hospitals and health systems figure out how to adopt artificial intelligence responsibly.

Benzait works with medium to large health systems, building the governance frameworks and technical infrastructure that AI actually requires before it goes anywhere near a patient. Ralph says the biggest problem in healthcare AI right now isn’t a lack of technology — it’s organizations rushing to adopt it before they’ve figured out what problem they’re trying to solve. His job, a lot of the time, is to slow people down just enough to get it right.

Ralph and Norisha both entered rooms where the conventional wisdom said they didn’t quite belong — a woman in commercial construction, an English major in healthcare tech — and found that being the unexpected person in the room turned out to be an advantage.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.

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