Our next guest has been winning playwrighting awards since she was in high school in our state. Several awards later, she graduated from the University of South Carolina's english department and moved to New York City where she most recently won the 2015 Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theater; an award that nurtures talented composers and playwrights and enables their musicals to be produced in the Big Apple. Mike Switzer interviews Sarah Hammond, a Columbia, SC native who now lives and writes in Brooklyn.
After almost 20 years, Mike Switzer retired from Wells Fargo Securities in 2001 as Senior Vice President/Investment Officer and Certified Portfolio Manager. In 1999, he and his wife, Maggie, purchased and operated for eight years the Baskin Robbins ice cream store on Forest Drive in Columbia. They grew the store from a bottom-tier operation in the Baskin Robbins franchise system to one in the top 5% nationwide within three years, tripling sales along the way. While operating the ice cream store, Mike and Maggie received patents for a portable ice cream sink and fold-down sneezeguard they invented and in 2002 started Magnolia Carts, an ice cream cart manufacturing company, which they sold in 2013.