Sarah Spitsen: From a Car Full of Candles to a College Classroom

Episode Summary

Sarah Spitsen has spent her career making up her own job title. She started her first company out of college, kept a candle business alive by selling nearly everything she owned and living out of her car, and later built a brand-new college degree program from scratch. In this conversation, she joins Randy and Marilyn to talk about where that drive comes from, what it's meant to build things in Lincoln, and why she keeps choosing this city over any other.

About Sarah Spitsen

Sarah Spitsen is the founding director of the Philip S. Mullin Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program at Nebraska Wesleyan University [hyperlink "Philip S. Mullin Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program" to https://www.nebrwesleyan.edu/academics/majors-and-minors/innovation-and-entrepreneurship/innovation-and-entrepreneurship-degree], the first program of its kind in the state. She is the founder of Feya Candle Company, a community organizer with 1 Million Cups Lincoln, and a longtime volunteer with Make-A-Wish Nebraska [hyperlink "Make-A-Wish Nebraska" to https://wish.org/nebraska], where she serves on the Friends Council. She recently joined the innovation team at Olsson.

About the Conversation

The conversation moves the way Sarah's career has — quickly, and in unexpected directions. She traces the early years of Feya Candle Company, from teaching herself to make candles in a four-pound pot in her kitchen to a storefront, an invitation to the Oscars gifting suite, and the decision to sell everything and go all in from the driver's seat of her car.
From there, Randy and Marilyn draw out the second act: the phone call from the Chamber of Commerce, the two-million-dollar gift that made the Nebraska Wesleyan program possible, and the year Sarah spent as its director, department chair, and sole full-time faculty member, building a four-year degree open to students in every discipline. Along the way she and Randy revisit TEDx Nebraska Wesleyan, the student-led event they helped bring to campus, and Marilyn — who helped found Lincoln's Science Focus Program decades ago — connects Sarah's story back to a school that shaped her as a teenager.
It's a conversation about resilience, about solving problems for the joy of it, and about a community that Sarah describes as a giant small town.