Common Grounds: Conversations from The Roasting Room

About Common Grounds: Conversations from The Roasting Room

Some of the best conversations happen over coffee. Common Ground is a series of thoughtful, unhurried conversations with people shaping the life of Lincoln, Nebraska and beyond. Hosted by Randy Bretz and Dr. Marilyn S. Moore, and presented by The Coffee Roaster. Learn more at coffeeroasterlnk.com

Publisher

The Coffee Roaster

Category

society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

28 Apr 2026

Latest episode

21 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

15 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   21 Oct 2026

   John Skretta: From Northeast High Classroom to LPS Superintendent

   Dr. John Skretta, Superintendent of Lincoln Public Schools, joins Randy Bretz and Dr. Marilyn S. Moore in the Roasting Room for a conversation about mentoring, neighborhood schools, and what it means for a growing city to share a single school district.Skretta began his career teaching reading and English at Lincoln Northeast High School in 1995. He went on to lead Norris Public Schools and Educational Service Unit 6 before returning to LPS in 2024. He talks about the TeamMates mentoring program as it marks its 35th year, the centennial of Sheridan Elementary, and the range of focus programs and high school choices open to LPS students. He also explains the statutory provision that lets Lincoln grow as one city with one school district. Along the way, he credits the mentors who shaped him, including a personal note from Dr. Moore that he still thinks about decades later.Common Grounds: Conversations from The Roasting Room is recorded at The Coffee Roaster in Lincoln, Nebraska. These conversations are designed to help us better understand the people who share this place and the stories that shape it.

2. 

   18 Sept 2026

   Lisa Guill: The Lives of Immigrants and Refugees, and Why Lincoln Welcomes

   Lisa Guill is Director of Communications and Development at the Asian Community & Cultural Center in Lincoln, Nebraska, and one of five editors of "The Lives of Immigrants and Refugees: Tales of Migration, Hope, Grief, and Finding Home in Nebraska," published by the University of Nebraska Press.The book collects thirty-one first-person essays by immigrants and refugees who now call Lincoln home. In this conversation with Randy Bretz and Dr. Marilyn S. Moore, Lisa describes how an idea raised at a press conference in the spring of 2023 became a published anthology — the monthly workshops, the elders whose stories had to be captured by interview, the friends she describes asking again and again, and the editors paired one-to-one with writers who had never published anything before.The conversation widens from there. Lincoln is home to more than thirty thousand immigrants and refugees, roughly ten percent of the city. Lisa talks about what that has built: a resettlement infrastructure decades in the making, the New Americans Task Force, employers who bring English classes onto the factory floor, and a Four Star Certified Welcoming designation from Welcoming America that required evidence for eighty separate requirements. She also talks about what the visiting reviewers kept asking, and the answer that kept coming back — the people in Lincoln.Recorded in the roasting room at The Coffee Roaster.Common Grounds: Conversations from The Roasting Room is hosted by Randy Bretz and Dr. Marilyn S. Moore and recorded at The Coffee Roaster in Lincoln, Nebraska.Asian Community & Cultural Center: https://www.lincolnasiancenter.orgLincoln/Lancaster County Welcoming Plan: https://welcominglnk.orgHelping Neighbors LNK: https://www.helpingneighborslnk.orgCultural Centers of Lincoln Collaborative: https://culturalcentersoflincolncollaborative.comThe book, from University of Nebraska Press: https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/bison-books/9781496249647/the-lives-of-immigrants-and-refugees/Episode archive: https://coffeeroasterlnk.com/blogs/common-grounds

3. 

   8 Sept 2026

   Albert Maxey on Coming to Lincoln in 1957 — Basketball, Police Work, and a Life in Art

   He was eighteen when he stepped off the train in Lincoln in 1957, recruited out of Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis to play for Jerry Bush. His new wife took one look at the stagecoach parked in the depot and asked what he had gotten them into. Albert Maxey never left. He flunked out, walked across the street to the police department because he needed a job, and stayed more than two decades — patrol, sergeant, detective, the FBI National Academy. He came back to Lincoln Public Schools as its first campus supervisor. He finished his degree in art education in 1973 and has been painting ever since. In this conversation with Randy Bretz and Dr. Marilyn S. Moore, Maxey talks about arriving, about the Malone Center as the place he could find people who looked like him, about a night in Missouri when a restaurant refused to serve the team, and about his late wife JoAnn, who became the first Black member of the Lincoln school board and the first Black woman to serve in the Nebraska Legislature. Recorded in the roasting room at The Coffee Roaster in Lincoln, Nebraska.

4. 

   8 Sept 2026

   Toni Rupe on Growing Junior Achievement Across Nebraska

   Toni Rupe is President and CEO of Junior Achievement of Lincoln, a nonprofit that brings financial literacy, work readiness, and entrepreneurship programs into K-12 classrooms through volunteers from the business community. In this conversation with Randy Bretz and Dr. Marilyn S. Moore, Toni talks about the decision to extend Junior Achievement's reach across the rest of Nebraska rather than concentrate on Lincoln, why she believes rural students need economic education at least as much as urban ones, and how the organization traded a five-million-dollar building plan for a program that packs into a truck and sets up in a school gym. She also talks about the six years she spent on the Ceresco village board — including two as chair — and what running a small village taught her about leadership, sewer systems, and power lines. Randy served on the Junior Achievement board years ago, which gives the conversation a long view of how the organization has changed: from evening meetings at the Goodyear plant, to classroom curriculum packets, to online delivery and mobile simulations. Common Grounds: Conversations from The Roasting Room is recorded at The Coffee Roaster in Lincoln, Nebraska.

5. 

   21 Aug 2026

   Steve Joel on Twelve Years Leading Lincoln Public Schools

   Steve Joel served as superintendent of Lincoln Public Schools from 2010 to 2022, the last twelve years of a 37-year superintendency that began in Kansas and ran through Beatrice and Grand Island. He is now Regional Director for the Central Region at the executive search firm McPherson & Jacobson. He came to Nebraska from Long Island in 1972 to play football at Doane, homesick enough that first fall that he planned to run away — a plan interrupted by a group of upperclassmen who took him snipe hunting. In this conversation, Steve talks with Randy Bretz and Dr. Marilyn S. Moore about the fire that leveled the LPS district office at the end of his first year in Lincoln, the phrase "all means all" and where it came from, why he thinks Lincoln's schools outperform districts with similar demographics, and what he tells superintendents about listening to a community without being governed by its loudest voices. Marilyn describes the thirteen-year study in which she followed 254 Lincoln kindergartners through graduation — and what burned along with the district office. Common Grounds: Conversations from The Roasting Room is recorded at The Coffee Roaster in Lincoln, Nebraska.

6. 

   31 Jul 2026

   Liz Ring Carlson on Authenticity, Soft Skills, and What Makes Lincoln Work

   Liz Ring Carlson has spent nearly thirty years in corporate communications, most of it in Lincoln. She is vice president of corporate communications and community relations at Ameritas, a founding board member of ECHO Collective, and a Kansas State history major who found her way into public relations more or less sideways.In this conversation with Randy Bretz and Dr. Marilyn S. Moore, she talks about the peacock mug that reminds her to stop trying to fit in, the pandemic dinner her three kids staged to cheer her up, and the soft skills she looks for in interns that she says she cannot teach. She also makes a case for why Lincoln is an unusually easy place to make something happen — two degrees of separation, she calls it — and what the city needs to attend to as it grows.Recorded in the roasting room at The Coffee Roaster in Lincoln, Nebraska.ABOUT THE SHOWCommon Grounds: Conversations from The Roasting Room is an ongoing series of unhurried conversations with people whose work and ideas shape the life of Lincoln, Nebraska and our surrounding community. Hosted by Randy Bretz and Dr. Marilyn S. Moore, recorded at The Coffee Roaster.Episode archive: https://coffeeroasterlnk.com/blogs/common-groundsListen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.#LizRingCarlson #LincolnNebraska #EchoCollective #Ameritas #CommonGroundsPodcast

7. 

   19 Jul 2026

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

   Sarah Spitsen has started five companies, lived out of her car for eight months to keep one of them alive, and later built a first-of-its-kind innovation and entrepreneurship degree from the ground up at Nebraska Wesleyan University. In this conversation, she talks with Randy Bretz and Dr. Marilyn Moore about founding Feya Candle Company, bringing TEDx to campus, her work with Make-A-Wish Nebraska and 1 Million Cups, and the idea she keeps coming back to: that in Lincoln, community tends to win out over competition. Recorded inside The Coffee Roaster in Lincoln, Nebraska.

8. 

   11 Jul 2026

   Rick Alloway: A Life in Radio and the Art of Listening

   Rick Alloway has spent more than forty years teaching broadcasting at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and managing 90.3 KRNU, the university's student radio station — and this summer he is retiring. He joins Randy Bretz and Dr. Marilyn Moore to trace a career that started in a high school radio program at KFOR and carried him through the ad world and back to the university, where he signed the station on before dawn and taught generations of students to find their voice. The conversation moves from the decline of AM radio to the rise of podcasts and the storytellers they freed, and settles on the question underneath it all: in an age of bots, AI, and endless feeds, how do we know what to trust? It closes, fittingly, on a mug, a marriage, and a morning cup of coffee. Recorded at The Coffee Roaster in Lincoln, Nebraska

9. 

   17 Jun 2026

   Tradition, Unity, Diversity, Excellence: Mark Larson on Lincoln High

   Mark Larson is the principal of Lincoln High School, a school in the core of the city with students from more than fifty countries and one of Nebraska's three International Baccalaureate programs. He joins Randy Bretz and Dr. Marilyn Moore to talk about what makes Lincoln High distinctive, the community partners who help meet students' needs, and the story behind the school's mascot, the Links. Mark also shares his own path to Lincoln High — from a small town in central Nebraska to more than two decades in the same building — and reflects on the last days of the school year, the weight and joy of graduation, and why relationships remain at the center of his work. Recorded at The Coffee Roaster in Lincoln, Nebraska.

10. 

    28 May 2026

    Amanda Barker on Weaving Lincoln's Social Fabric

    What does it take to hold a community together? In this episode of Common Grounds, Randy Bretz and Dr. Marilyn S. Moore sit down with Amanda Barker, head of community engagement at the Lincoln Community Foundation, to talk about the everyday work of connection.Amanda has spent her career as a connector across Nebraska tourism, Civic Nebraska, Beehive Industries, and the Mayor's office, and she was named Lincoln's Young Citizen of the Year. She's also a pie baker and the mother of two unofficial playground testers. The conversation moves easily from her kids' candid reviews of a new park to the deeper questions of how neighbors come to know and rely on one another.At the heart of the conversation is the Weaver Awards, a new initiative the Lincoln Community Foundation is bringing to the city as one of 25 community hosts selected nationwide through the Weave Institute, part of the Aspen Institute. Over four years, the program will recognize ordinary people who pull others together, with $4,000 awards supporting their work. Amanda explains the four qualities that define weaving: it is local, mutual, welcoming, and relational. Applications and nominations open June 10 and run through August 10 at LCF.org.Along the way, Amanda and the hosts reflect on Give to Lincoln Day, the role of the Lincoln Community Foundation as a neutral convener on housing and early childhood, and why a banana tossed across a porch can say everything about a place. It's a thoughtful conversation about trust, generosity, and the kind of community that gets built one relationship at a time.Common Grounds is recorded inside the roasting room at The Coffee Roaster in Lincoln, Nebraska. Each episode is a chance to get to know the people and stories that shape our community. Grab a cup and join us.

11. 

    27 May 2026

    Andy Seiler: Telling Nebraska's Stories, One Person at a Time

    Andy Seiler never set out to become a storyteller. He arrived in Lincoln from Texas to attend Union College, briefly chased a dream of flying search-and-rescue helicopters, taught English in Prague, and found his real calling almost by accident — re-editing a lost Valentine's video for his brother and realizing he'd found the thing he loved to do.Today, Andy is the founder of the Good Life Network, a local entertainment platform built on a simple but radical idea: that the best stories in Nebraska are about the people who live here. In this conversation with hosts Randy Bretz and Dr. Marilyn S. Moore, Andy talks about building a "local Netflix," what he's learned listening to people from behind the camera, and why coming home to Lincoln felt like the right decision for his family.From copper-mug makers in O'Neill to a bakery in Cortland run by a psychiatrist, Andy shares the stories that have stayed with him — and makes the case that amplifying what makes a place great means starting with its people.Recorded inside the roasting room at The Coffee Roaster in Lincoln, Nebraska.

12. 

    28 Apr 2026

    168 Parks and 186 Miles of Trails: A Conversation with Maggie Stuckey-Ross on Lincoln's Parks

    Maggie Stuckey-Ross leads one of Lincoln's most visible public departments — Parks and Recreation — but her path there ran through Capitol Hill, the Arbor Day Foundation, and a childhood spent on the playground at Irvingdale Park. In this conversation, she walks Randy and Marilyn through the philosophy behind a parks system designed so that nearly every household in Lincoln sits within a ten-minute walk of a green space, a trail, a pool, or a rec center. Along the way, she shares the story of the new Canopy Yard skate park downtown, the thinking behind playgrounds designed for children of every ability, the Lincoln Parks Foundation's role in funding the city's most beloved spaces, and Lincoln's quiet national distinction: number one in the country for outdoor basketball hoops per capita. A thoughtful conversation about public stewardship, community design, and the spaces that quietly hold our lives together. Recorded at The Coffee Roaster in Lincoln, Nebraska.

13. 

    28 Apr 2026

    Downtown Todd: A Conversation with Todd Ogden on the Future of Downtown Lincoln

    Todd Ogden, better known around Lincoln as "Downtown Todd", joins Randy and Marilyn in the roasting room for a conversation about the city's most visible, and most ambitious, neighborhood.As President and CEO of the Downtown Lincoln Association, Todd has a hand in nearly every major project shaping the city's core: the O Street streetscape rebuild now underway, the long-planned convention center near the Cornhusker, the new Music Box venue, the emerging Boehmer Street music district, the future library at the Centrum, and South Haymarket Park. He walks us through what is happening, why it is happening now, and what it will feel like to live, work, and visit downtown in the years ahead.Along the way, Todd talks about the 2018 downtown master plan and the patience required to bring big civic ideas to life, the business improvement district that quietly keeps downtown clean and cared for, the growth of downtown residency from 3,000 people in 2010 to roughly 15,000 today, and the new Downtown Lincoln Coalition that is inviting residents, employees, and enthusiasts to become Downtown Champions.He also reflects on what keeps him in Lincoln — family, the football coach for a father-in-law, the idea that "one voice can make a change" — and why he believes downtowns, in the end, are about people more than buildings.

14. 

    28 Apr 2026

    Sweet Work: Gaylene Steinbach and the Art of Lulubee Chocolate | Common Grounds Podcast

    What does it take to turn a moment of wonder into a life's work? For Gaylene Steinbach, it started with a box of chocolates her mother gave her — the most beautiful she had ever seen. She and her family of four cut each piece into quarters just to make them last. The flavors stayed with her. The curiosity never left.In this conversation recorded inside the roasting room at The Coffee Roaster, Gaylene talks with Randy Bretz about the unlikely path from dental hygiene to chocolatier, the science and patience behind a single hand-painted bonbon, and what it means to build a small business in a city that genuinely wants you to succeed.She also talks about her daughters — one a critical and honest taste-tester, the other her right hand from middle school through the early years of the shop — and about the web of small business friendships in Lincoln that make solo work feel a little less alone.There's toffee on the table. There's chocolate. And there's a conversation about craft, community, and what happens when you follow something that genuinely fascinates you.---- LINKS ----Lulubee Chocolates: www.lulubeechocolates.comThe Coffee Roaster: www.coffeeroasterlnk.com

15. 

    28 Apr 2026

    Bo Jones: Building Lincoln from the Ground Up | Common Grounds Podcast

    Bo Jones has spent more than 25 years building things in Lincoln, Nebraska. He founded True Built Construction and helped create Career Pathway, a platform now connecting students and employers in 49 states.Find every episode and experience The Coffee Roaster at coffeeroasterlnk.comIn this first episode of Common Ground, hosts Randy Bretz and Dr. Marilyn S. Moore sit down with Bo for a conversation about construction, community, and what it takes to prepare the next generation for meaningful work.Common Ground is presented by The Coffee Roaster in Lincoln, Nebraska.--- LINKS ---Career Pathway: careerpathway dot comThe Coffee Roaster: coffeeroasterLNK dot com

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