Episode Details

The Sumner County Schools innovation center started with one conversation on the volleyball bleachers. Katherine Louw, executive director of the Carolyn Smith Foundation, was watching a game when a fellow parent said the schools could use the empty building on East Main Street in Hendersonville.

That building was the longtime home of STR, the hotel data company Randy and Carolyn Smith built from Hendersonville into a global business. When the company moved out in 2024, the Smith family hoped the space would do something good for the community. Katherine, a seventh-generation Sumner County native who spent 16 years in fundraising before moving into grant making, carried the idea to them. Today it's the Carolyn Smith Innovation Center, where students from high schools across the county sit around tables and work on real problems together.

Katherine, the show's first guest, is back with the whole story: how the deal came together, what she sees from her office inside the building, and why teenagers need room to fail. Kathryn shares the student-run marketing agency a group of high school students is designing there, and Katherine explains how a Christmas song shaped the way she's approaching this year.

For parents weighing a schedule change, nonprofit leaders, and anyone wondering what one conversation can start.