Full Circle

Cameo Hoyle ’10

Cameo Hoyle ’10 opens her own business across from Randolph College

After years of crisscrossing the United States pursuing various opportunities and passions, Cameo Hoyle ’10 has found herself right back where she started—in sight of Randolph College’s Red Brick Wall.

Hoyle and her partner, Lyndsey, recently expanded their business, Good Karma Tea Company, and moved into a new location on Norfolk Avenue. Previously located in downtown Lynchburg, Hoyle’s business offers a wide variety of homemade herbal teas, provides wellness services such as massages, reflexology, and hot stone therapy, and hosts community workshops involving meditation and art.

“It’s all about creating a lifestyle brand rather than just a product,” Hoyle said. “We want to be a place where people can come talk to us about wellness and where we can help them achieve a happier, healthier lifestyle.”

This summer, Good Karma Tea Company moved into a new location on Norfolk Avenue, right across the street from Randolph.

Though she has come full circle location wise, Hoyle attributes much of her success to the long journey that began when she first enrolled at the College in 1995. She decided midway through to leave college to pursue other interests. She then moved to Texas, where she owned a spa, before going to Colorado, where she learned and practiced massage therapy.

A job at a Colorado art gallery led Hoyle to rediscover her interest in the creative arts, and she decided to return to Randolph to pursue a degree in studio art.

“I fell in love with the school and the education it offered me, and I felt like I had more independence in developing myself and my thoughts and creative abilities than I ever had before,” Hoyle said. “I felt very nurtured to explore everything and to do anything I wanted to.”

After earning her degree in 2010, Hoyle ventured back to Colorado, where she worked as exhibits director for the Telluride Historical Museum. At the same time, she continued to explore the art of blending and brewing tea from a friend who owned a tea shop in the area. A prestigious fellowship at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., brought her back to the East Coast in 2014, after which she was hired as executive director by the Lynchburg–based James River Council for the Arts and Humanities. In 2015, she decided it was time to combine all of her experiences and passions into her own
business, and Good Karma Tea Company was born.

“Everything I’ve gone through in my life up to this point is incredibly valuable in every step as an entrepreneur, from marketing, to networking, to community development, to knowing how to sell my products, to the creation of the business and the product,” Hoyle said. “I also write all of the content for our website and our packaging, so those writing skills and everything else I learned at Randolph will always stay with me and are incredibly valuable.”