Taylor Van Pelt has had what she calls three careers by age 38 — hospitality management, a 12-year international wooden toy business, and now workforce development, where she helped build Bartow County's WRAP program connecting people leaving jail with real jobs. Somewhere along the way, she and her husband also started renting their own investment property directly to formerly incarcerated tenants, a fact that draws exactly the kind of online hate you'd expect and exactly the kind of response you'd hope for from someone who spends her days working reentry cases.
Fired for taking her own maternity leave
Taylor's first career ended almost by accident. She was working the manager-in-training program at a Savannah Marriott, three weeks into her legally protected maternity leave with her first daughter, when her GM called asking her to come back early. "I'm not coming back," she said, without even checking with her husband first. She got paid through the leave and then that was it. The moment stuck with her: the U.S. is the only developed nation without federally mandated paid parental leave, and she still cites the comparison — Sweden offers 68 weeks, Bulgaria 410 days at 90% salary — when she advocates for employer flexibility today.
The wooden toy brand that landed in Southern Living
Out of work with a newborn, Taylor started making her own wooden toys after getting spooked watching her daughter chew paint off a store-bought block. She listed them on Etsy, became a top seller, and grew it into an international brand carried in boutiques across Canada, Norway, and Australia — eventually getting invited to pitch buyers from Macy's and Whole Foods at Etsy's headquarters. A wooden teether went viral after landing in Chip and Joanna Gaines's nursery, and professional photography of her products got her featured in Southern Living. She ran the business for 12 years, pivoting during the pandemic to private-label manufacturing for European brands that couldn't get product shipped, before eventually selling off her certifications and closing the business about four years ago.
Manufacturing pays better than her college degree ever did
Taylor's current work is convincing high schoolers that manufacturing isn't the "dark, dirty, dingy" industry their grandparents describe. She routinely tours students through plants she says are clean enough to eat off the floor, with starting wages around $18-20 an hour and some roles paying up to $30 with shift differential — more, she points out, than she made with a college degree in Marriott's own manager-in-training program. She now oversees workforce development across 19 counties and predicts that by 2035, people in skilled trades will out-earn those with master's degrees.
How the WRAP program actually came together
The WRAP reentry program grew out of a folder of half-started conversations Taylor inherited when she took the workforce role at the Chamber, plus a partnership with Janet Queen, a retired Bartow County Sheriff's Office employee from Taylorsville who'd watched incarceration cycle through the same families for decades. With Sheriff Millsap's blessing, the program pulls together workforce training, Kevin Harris and Recovery Bartow for addiction support, and cognitive rehabilitation classes — built, in Taylor's words, "in the air," studying other counties' programs and borrowing what worked. The core belief: employment alone doesn't fix reentry if someone is walking straight back into the same environment and the same addiction.
Renting to the tenants everyone else turns away
The rental property started as an ordinary investment goal — Taylor's family has six kids and wanted extra income — but when a landlord's unit came open, she was upfront with the out-of-state owner: she'd guarantee the rent herself in exchange for subleasing to people with backgrounds, all of them drug-tested and under community supervision. "My risk truly is a little more minimal than others," she said, since her tenants are more closely monitored than any ordinary renter. The results surprised her: in an arrangement she expected to turn over every three to six months, she's had only one tenant leave — and that was because she got her kids back and needed more space. The owner has since offered the family a second unit and a lease-to-purchase deal on the original property, moved up years ahead of their original financial plan. When online critics accuse her of bad business sense, she posts a screenshot of her old toy company's Forbes feature and lets her followers handle the rest.
Listen to the Full Conversation
This recap only scratches the surface. Taylor also gets into raising a blended family of six kids, the emotional gut-punch of meeting a WRAP participant with a seventh-grade education, and her surprisingly wholesome rapid-fire answers on Grease, Dolly Parton, and Lil Wayne. Catch the full episode below.
Listen to Episode #523
Catch the full conversation with Taylor Van Pelt on Your Morning Drive, wherever you listen.
