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Discover Lafayette

Discover Lafayette

De: Jan Swift
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Episodios
  • UL – Lafayette Career Services and Internships, Preparing Students and Employers for Success

    UL – Lafayette Career Services and Internships, Preparing Students and Employers for Success
    Feb 6 2026
    On this episode of Discover Lafayette, we sit down with two leaders deeply involved in shaping student career readiness at University of Louisiana at Lafayette: Brandi Hollier, Director of the B.I. Moody College of Business Internship Program, and Kim Billeaudeau, Director of the Office of Career Services. Together, they share how internships, professional preparation, and employer partnerships come together to help students transition confidently from the classroom into the workforce — while also supporting local businesses looking to grow talent. Kim Billeaudeau: A Career Built on Mentorship Kim Billeaudeau has served in Career Services for 25 years, including nearly 19 years as director. A Louisiana native from Opelousas, Kim’s journey began close to home. “I grew up right down the street in Opelousas, and I taught high school,” she shared. After earning her degree from UL and teaching high school for two years, she realized her passion was helping students navigate life beyond graduation. “I remembered mentors that I had as a student at UL Lafayette; professional staff members who saw something in me as a student leader,” Kim said. “When Career Services came available, it was perfect.” Over the years, Kim has helped students with résumés, interviewing, dining etiquette, career fairs, and professional presence. She still sees the long-term impact today. “They’ll say, ‘Miss Kim, you taught me dining etiquette’ or ‘you helped me with my résumé.’ What I do is amazing, and I’m so blessed to be able to help students each and every day, to graduate and be successful from our institution.” Professional Skills Beyond the Classroom Kim emphasized that many students simply haven’t had exposure to professional environments before. “Sometimes students don’t have an opportunity to put on professional clothing or go through a four or five course meal,” she explained. “The more we can provide them that hands-on experience, that’s part of the education experience.” Career Services offers mock interviews, interview preparation, and coaching on everything from researching employers to follow-up thank-you notes. “We do a lot of mock interviews with students. Everything from preparing for the interview, not only choosing what to wear, but researching the company, getting notes together, thinking of what questions you can ask in the interview and getting them to understand that it’s a two way street. Everything to giving a good firm handshake, introducing yourself, when to sit, where to sit, looking the employer in the eye, smiling, and then answering interview questions. And then the follow up with thank you, and online applications. We coach students all through the process.” Kim is also a certified etiquette consultant through The Etiquette Institute and completed refresher training on post-COVID etiquette, which she now incorporates into student preparation. Brandi Guidry Hollier: From Student to Professor to Internship Director Brandi Hollier is an associate professor in the Department of Management and has served as Director of the Moody College of Business Internship Program for more than 12 years. A Lafayette native, her career path has come full circle. She’s currently the recipient of two endowed professorships. “I was born and raised here in Lafayette, Louisiana. I kind of grew up at UL,” Brandi said. She earned both her undergraduate degree and MBA from UL before starting as an adjunct instructor, later becoming full-time faculty and earning her doctorate. “There are professors at the university that have taught me that I now work with, which is a beautiful thing.” Brandi also oversees internship programming that connects students with real-world experience before graduation. “There are opportunities to go out into an organization and get some professional experience prior to entering the workforce,” she said. “It’s my honor and it’s a blessing to be able to help students in doing that.” Research, Technology, and the Changing Business Landscape Brandi’s research focuses on technology adoption, including telemedicine, artificial intelligence, and personality in human-computer interaction, work that directly influences how she teaches. “Artificial intelligence is here to stay,” she noted. “We have to allow students the opportunity to engage with that, and teach them how to properly do so within ethical realms.” She emphasized that curriculum is evolving to reflect rapid changes in technology and business practices. Internships: Events, Employers, and Real Connections Through collaboration with Career Services, the Moody College of Business offers internship panels, employer seminars, networking receptions, and career fair prep seminars. One standout event is the business internship networking reception held at the UL Lafayette Alumni Center. “Resumes are not brought in. We discourage that,” Brandi explained. “We ...
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    48 m
  • Stephanie Manson, President: FMOL Health | Our Lady of Lourdes

    Stephanie Manson, President: FMOL Health | Our Lady of Lourdes
    Jan 30 2026
    Stephanie Manson, President: FMOL Health/ Our Lady of Lourdes, joins Discover Lafayette to talk about leadership, mission-driven Catholic healthcare, and the most significant hospital expansions Lafayette has seen in years. Stephanie shares her deeply personal journey into healthcare administration, her love for Louisiana and Lafayette, and how Our Lady of Lourdes is expanding capacity, technology, and compassionate care through the Advancing Acadiana initiative, while staying grounded in a values-based mission that puts people first. Stephanie has dedicated her professional life to Catholic health care and the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System. She began her career as an administrative resident at Our Lady of the Lake in Baton Rouge and steadily progressed through leadership roles, including serving as the first administrator of Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital and later as Chief Operating Officer from 2018 to 2023. In March 2023, she joined Our Lady of Lourdes, continuing her work in Louisiana communities she deeply values. “I grew up in Houma, Louisiana, so I’m a Louisiana girl, and it was important to me to give back to Louisiana.” Stephanie holds dual master’s degrees in Business Administration and Health Administration from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, along with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology from LSU. She describes her path into health care administration as a blend of service and business, exactly the balance she set out to find. “I set out to find a career that balanced service and business; 100% of healthcare administration checked those boxes. I’ve still not touched a patient. Sometimes I try to help and I get told, no, please don’t do that. You’re going to mess us up. But to see the work we do carried out through the work of our team, that’s extremely fulfilling. It is why I’ve kept going in this ministry for so long.” A Health System Serving Acadiana The Our Lady of Lourdes system includes three hospitals, approximately 2,800 team members, and more than 200 employed providers, including physicians and nurse practitioners. Stephanie oversees a rapidly growing regional footprint that now offers comprehensive care from birth through end of life. “We offer comprehensive services from birth until end of life care. And that’s important for the community to be able to have access to that.” The system includes: Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center, the legacy acute care campus located at 4801 Ambassador Caffery Parkway, Lafayette LA 70508;Our Lady of Lourdes Heart Hospital, featuring a 32-bed inpatient unit and advanced cardiovascular care, located at 1105 Kaliste Saloom Road, Lafayette LA 70508; and Our Lady of Lourdes Women’s & Children’s Hospital, acquired in 2019, expanding services for mothers, babies, and pediatric patients, located at 4600 Ambassador Caffery Parkway, Lafayette LA 70508. Stephanie emphasizes that growth has never been about size—it has always been about mission. “It was never about growth or being the biggest. It’s about delivering Catholic health care in the communities that need it.” Advancing Acadiana One of the most significant initiatives underway is Advancing Acadiana, a multi-campus investment focused on expanding access, improving patient flow, and ensuring the hospital can say “yes” to more patients who need specialized care. Projects include: Expansion of inpatient capacity at the Regional Medical Center (approximately 20 additional beds)Emergency department expansion to improve access and efficiencyA new electrophysiology lab and additional inpatient beds and operating rooms at the Heart HospitalMajor upgrades at Women’s & Children’s, including approximately 20 private NICU family suites, a refreshed exterior, and a new chapel Our Lady of Lourdes’ Women’s and Children’s Hospital is undergoing $100 million in improvements. At the heart of the Advancing Acadiana project is the expansion of the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit, featuring significant exterior upgrades and private suites, each with a full bathroom and a dedicated family area within the room. The NICU will expand from 51 to 60 beds and will feature 19 new private suites. “Talk about a sacred moment and a tender moment… a private opportunity for them to be together as a family is so important. Leadership as a Climb Toward Excellence Stephanie Manson describes her leadership philosophy using a Mount Everest metaphor, introduced by President and Chief Executive Officer and leader of Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System E.J. Kuiper, with five “camps” on the climb toward excellence. “The idea is that the foundation or the base of the mountain is our mission, and that everything we do should be grounded in our mission. That’s why we’re here. And that’s really what the sisters ask of us every day, to perpetuate the mission, to always do more for ...
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    52 m
  • Bob Miller, CEO and Founder of IRGame, Gamification for Incident Response Training

    Bob Miller, CEO and Founder of IRGame, Gamification for Incident Response Training
    Jan 23 2026
    Bob Miller, CEO and Founder of IRGame, is a technology entrepreneur with 30+ years of experience across cybersecurity and emerging technologies. He’s a pioneer in using AI-powered gamification for incident response (“IR”) training, designed specifically for busy executives who can’t spend full days in training but must make high-stakes decisions quickly during real crises. IRGame puts executive teams through realistic scenario such as ransomware, data breaches, business email compromise, and AI-related incidents, so they can practice decision-making under pressure. Returning to Lafayette and building startups Bob graduated in 1988 from University of Louisiana – Monroe in Computer Science and Math. He moved back to Louisiana from San Jose around 2010 and chose Lafayette as home. Almost immediately, the Lafayette Economic Development Authority (LEDA) contacted him about helping build a startup accelerator. With experience across roughly 10 startups, he became founding director of what he named the Opportunity Machine, where his title was “Head Machinist”). Bob later continued mentoring via the Accelerator Board. After three years, engineer and entrepreneur Bill Fenstermaker recruited him to help commercialize products at Fenstermaker & Associates. Bob worked on projects including a custom GIS system and underwater acoustics, following earlier work in areas like satellite systems. Later he became COO at Waitr in its early stage, helping scale from about 300 to 3,000 employees in roughly 12–14 months, the kind of operational scaling challenge he’s often brought in to manage. He then joined a local managed service provider and helped transform it into a managed security service provider, an experience that directly led to IR Game. Why IR Game exists Bob identified a persistent problem: many organizations resist spending time and money on cybersecurity because they don’t understand it and lack an emotional connection because they have never experienced a crisis. Traditional tabletop training exercises meant to train a business team on how to respond during a crisis (paper scenarios, PowerPoint presentations, and sitting around a conference table discussing solutions) have existed for decades, but they’re time-consuming (often 80–90 hours to prepare) and require pulling people into a room for a full day, which makes them expensive and hard to scale. If it’s hard, many companies simply don’t do it. Bob attended a cybersecurity conference and participated in a tabletop designed for managed service providers, an exercise that was “fundamentally terrifying” and eye-opening. A worst-case Managed Service Provider (“MSP”) scenario is when a third-party tool, especially remote monitoring and management (RMM) software, gets compromised. That can lead to ransomware across an MSP’s entire customer base simultaneously. The exercise illustrated IRGame’s central insight: about 80% of incident response is non-technical in nature: financial consequences, shutdown decisions, customer impact, employee panic, communications, reputational and legal exposure. Bob brought the tabletop back to his company and ran it with 80 of 130 employees, customizing it with real customer names, revenue figures, and tenure. Even with a mature incident response plan and twice-yearly practice, they discovered a dozen needed changes. That convinced him that if a well-prepared security organization learns that much from a scenario, “everybody can.” The breakthrough: turning tabletop into an online multiplayer game During that exercise, a longtime software collaborator of Bob’s mentioned he still had a dormant game app framework built years earlier for a high-school project with Bob’s daughter. He believed he could convert the paper tabletop into an online multiplayer experience in a weekend. After running the in-person tabletop on Thursday, he demonstrated a working browser-based multiplayer version on Sunday. They showed it to cybersecurity tabletop authors and industry influencers, Matt Lee and Ethan Tancredi, who were shocked by how quickly the tabletop content had been transformed into a functional digital game. Soon after, they invited about 20 people to test it. The early version looked rough, like a 1980s text adventure, but it worked. The response was far stronger than expected: participants reported intense emotional engagement and immediate practical takeaways. One government participant said it left him rattled, with pages of notes and a need for a drink; an MSP in Hawaii asked when he could use it with customers. That became a monthly community practice program: they’ve run 25+ free games, putting 1,000+ people through the system. As demand grew—especially from providers wanting to use it with customers—IRGame chose to commercialize. IR Game mirrors tabletop training but compresses it into a high-intensity, guided simulation. A scenario is narrated like scenes in a movie. Participants...
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    1 h
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