W
hen hearing Jolene Loetscher, 32, go over her schedule, it’s mind-boggling how she even has time to sleep. The serial entrepreneur owns several businesses, teaches two courses at the University of South Dakota, is on volunteer committees, and is avidly working on creating a non-profit camp for sexual abuse victims. “I don’t like to be bored,” Loetscher laughed. What she does like is that she can do the majority of her work from the comfort of her own home with her coworker, and husband, Nate Burdine. “People are like ‘I could never work with my husband,’ but I met him at work,” she said, smiling. The pair met while working at Kelo. “I like to remind him that I technically was his boss,” Loetscher laughed. “He says that was not the case, but we’ll argue on that point for the rest of our lives.” Their home office also is what Maggie and Mayhem call their stomping - or snorting - grounds. The pugs are the couple’s “furry children” and are the faces of DooGooders, a pet waste removal company that began as a way to make extra cash during graduate school. Loetscher had also been working full-time at Sanford in media relations while earning her M.B.A. from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, but decided to give self-employment a shot after DooGooders started to take off. “I just decided to go and try things on my own, and it’s been really good,” she said. “I love being my own boss.” The company donates 7 percent of proceeds to local charities, and has
42 | January 2012
grown 20 percent in the last year alone. “Last year at the height we had around 11 employees,” Loetscher said. When she’s not “dooing poo,” Loetscher also works with Burdine on Mud Mile, a company that dabbles in consulting, public relations, video production and copy writing. Clients include Johnny Carino’s, Daktronics and Strengthscope. “We’ve kind of been doing projects for a couple years, but full time was about a year ago,” she said. When she is not working on business ventures, Loetscher gets involved with community organizations like the Diabetes Research Foundation, Bark for Life and is on the board for Red Cross. But one cause is Loetscher’s “passion project” for 2012: Selfspiration. Loetscher started the website that she hopes to use to advocate for “better policy and tougher laws” for sexual abuse victims, and aims to eventually have a camp for kids of sexual abuse. “I would really like to see by the end of 2012 that we have, even if it’s just a day camp, one group of kids be able to come in and do something; even if it’s just for a day to meet other kids who have gone through something similar,” she explained. “For adults, too, who have gone through it, it’s a place to channel what’s happened and use that in a positive way, which I think is hard to do a lot of times because it’s such a negative experience.” And Loetscher used her own negative experience for the better when she came out publicly to the community to share her story of sexual abuse from a neighbor in her early teen years. “It’s scary, but it just seemed like the
right thing to do,” she said of opening up publicly. “At least once a week I hear from somebody who has gone through something similar. There’s a double edge of that it’s overwhelming to know that there are so many people out there, but it’s so fulfilling to know in sharing it I’ve helped somebody.” She also notes this as her highlight of the year, along with another monumental event: “It was also 2011 that I confronted my abuser. That was a huge moment for me, and a turning point in my healing.” Loetscher is also taking Selfspiration to Pierre where she will testify this month in hopes to eliminate the Statute of Limitations. “We’ve got a bill that will come up in the 2012 session, and it would remove the Statute of Limitations for rape, so that no matter what time period a person was raped they can always look to bring criminal charges,” she said. All of this work didn’t go unnoticed in the past year. Loetscher was named “Tomororw’s Leader” at the YWCA Tribute to Women in March. “That was a complete surprise. I was sitting in the back row,” she said With so much happening in 2011, it’s hard to imagine what is next. Maybe learning to leave work during work hours? Hardly. “It’s what you talk about when you make dinner, it’s what you talk about when you’re getting dressed in the morning,” Loetscher said. “It’s always there. And it’s the good and the bad of it.” For more info on Loetscher’s ventures, visit www.doogooders.com, www.selfspiration.com or www.joleneloetscher.com.