After two decades in corporate HR, Jennifer Lee Morse found herself at a crossroads. What emerged was The Art of Staying Wild, a Capital Region botanical brand built around clean ingredients, human connection and the idea that growing older should never mean losing your sense of curiosity.
For Jennifer Lee Morse, getting laid off in January 2024 wasn’t exactly the crisis it might have appeared to be.
After spending 20 years working in corporate human resources, Morse was burnt out. Rather than immediately searching for another position and returning to the familiar rhythms of corporate life, she saw the unexpected interruption as permission to reconsider what she actually wanted.
She already knew one thing.
She didn’t want to go back.
“I knew in my soul that I couldn’t go back to corporate life,” Morse said.
What came next would combine years of gardening, herbalism, entrepreneurship and a fascination with the different seasons of a woman’s life into The Art of Staying Wild, a Capital Region botanical business that is becoming much more than a collection of products.
Today, Morse creates botanical drink infusions that can be enjoyed with or without alcohol, while also developing retail partnerships, café and beverage programs, workshops, classes and events throughout the region.
But the story behind the company started long before its first product was sold.
A Love of Plants That Started With a Container Garden
Morse describes herself as an auntie, wife, sister, dog mom, best friend, herbalist, HR professional, avid reader, gardener, canner and unapologetic lover of coffee.
Her relationship with plants began years ago while living in an apartment in a small city. She and her then-boyfriend, now husband, planted a small container garden.
She was hooked.
Morse began reading everything she could find about gardening, herbs and canning. When the couple eventually purchased a home in the country, a larger garden gave her room to put that growing knowledge into practice.
Her curiosity eventually led her toward the serious study of herbalism.
Plants appealed to both sides of her personality. There was the sensory experience of watching something grow, smelling herbs and flowers and spending time outside. But there was also the science.
Understanding a plant’s constituents, which parts can be used, the body systems they traditionally support and the different ways plants can be prepared gave Morse an outlet for what she calls her “nerdy science and math mind.”
“Plants and herbalism both fascinate me and make me feel at peace,” she said.
Entrepreneurship wasn’t exactly foreign territory either.
Morse’s paternal grandfather owned a small business. Her mother opened a retail shop. One of her brothers operated a trucking company. The Art of Staying Wild is actually Morse’s fourth small business.
“I think entrepreneurship is genetic,” she joked.
After her corporate career ended, those different pieces of her life finally had room to come together.
What Does It Mean to Stay Wild?
The name of the business carries a meaning much larger than botanicals.
While reconsidering her career, Morse found herself thinking about the different roles and seasons women move through over the course of their lives, from being daughters, friends and aunties to mothers, partners and women navigating life after 50.
The Art of Staying Wild became her answer to a deceptively simple question: How do you move through all of those identities without forgetting yourself?
At its heart, Morse says the brand is for women. It is a reminder to remain young at heart, have fun and hold onto the parts of yourself that can easily get buried beneath responsibilities.
That philosophy led to The Pause Bar, a collection of clean botanical infusions built around another increasingly rare idea: stopping for a moment and actually being present.
And while the philosophy may be reflective, Morse’s earliest days in business were decidedly less glamorous.
There were bad labels.
There were printer battles.
There were questions about pricing, packaging, signage and how to make labels actually stay on jars.
There was also the moment every product entrepreneur waits for: strangers tried what she had created, liked it, bought it and eventually came back for more.
That was enough to keep going.
A Drink Where the Customer Makes the Rules
Morse initially experimented with cocktail infusions, using herbs infused in alcohol.
There was one problem.
She doesn’t really drink spirits.
That pushed her toward mocktail blends and eventually helped define one of The Art of Staying Wild’s biggest differentiators.
Morse saw plenty of cocktail infusions and alcohol alternatives already on the market, but she couldn’t find something that gave her the control she wanted over the final drink.
She didn’t want excessive sugar. She didn’t want artificial colors, unnecessary chemicals or preservatives.
She wanted herbs.
So she created products that could be infused in everything from juice and lemonade to coffee, water or alcohol.
The concept is something Morse describes as “Choose Your Own Adventure.”
Want alcohol? Add it.
Don’t want alcohol? Don’t.
Want lemonade instead of water? Go for it.
Rather than defining the experience for the customer, the botanicals become the foundation and the person drinking them decides where to take it.
“The customer gets full control over their drink, their experience, and what they put into their body,” Morse said. “The herbs do the magic.”
That flexibility is becoming increasingly relevant as drinking habits change.
Morse says she encounters mothers who are drinking less or not drinking at all, women in perimenopause who say alcohol no longer agrees with them, families looking for drinks they can share with their children and younger consumers who simply appear less interested in alcohol than previous generations.
For Morse, botanical beverages offer another possibility.
The drink itself can be the experience.
Alcohol doesn’t have to be what makes it interesting.
Growing Beyond the Jar
The Art of Staying Wild is now expanding beyond individual products.
Morse has developed relationships with retailers, participated in local events, introduced workshops and classes and created a café program designed to bring botanical beverages into hospitality environments.
Much of that expansion was always somewhere in the vision.
The café program wasn’t.
That idea came directly from a customer.
At an event, a bartender sampled one of Morse’s drinks and purchased a jar. During their conversation, the bartender mentioned wishing the bar where she worked could offer mocktails like Morse’s because its existing options contained so much sugar.
Morse couldn’t act on the suggestion immediately.
It took five months to figure out the details.
Then she launched the program.
It’s the kind of organic growth that has defined much of the business.
Classes and workshops, meanwhile, allow Morse to return to another part of her professional background. She has a degree in psychology and education, along with two decades of corporate HR experience where teaching and training were familiar territory.
Now she’s teaching something she genuinely loves.
The classes also provide something entrepreneurship doesn’t always offer: connection.
Running a small business can mean restocking stores, producing products, attending events, handling marketing and managing administrative work, often alone.
Classes put Morse in a room with people who are curious about plants.
“Those are my people,” she said.
Making Herbalism Less Intimidating
Spend enough time online and wellness can begin to feel remarkably complicated.
Morse wants to move in the opposite direction.
Her approach to herbalism often starts with something people already know.
Oregano, for example.
Instead of beginning with an obscure plant or complicated preparation, Morse can take an herb sitting in someone’s kitchen and explain the many ways it has traditionally been used.
Suddenly, herbalism doesn’t feel quite so distant.
People realize they may already have useful plants growing in their gardens or sitting inside their pantries.
For Morse, that accessibility matters in a world increasingly dominated by screens, technology, commitments and constant stimulation.
Plants bring people back to something tangible.
Her goal isn’t to turn every customer into an herbalist.
It’s to make them curious.
“I want AOSW to feel approachable,” Morse said. “You don’t have to be an herbalist, a gardener, or even a mocktail person. Come have fun, try something new, and connect with people.”
Building It in Upstate New York
For all of Morse’s ambitions for The Art of Staying Wild, there is one part of the company’s future she doesn’t envision changing.
Its home.
Morse was born and raised in Upstate New York. Her family is here. Her best friend, whom she considers chosen family, is here.
Building the company in the Capital Region allows her to remain close to those relationships while contributing to the community that shaped her.
It has also introduced her to a side of the region she hadn’t fully seen before becoming a business owner.
“The Maker community has been one of the very best surprises in this journey,” Morse said.
She describes the Capital District’s community of makers and independent businesses as collaborative and supportive, with entrepreneurs sharing opportunities and ideas while local retailers embrace working with smaller brands.
Morse didn’t realize how extensive that ecosystem was until she became part of it herself.
That local connection has become part of her growth strategy.
As someone who readily admits she isn’t a natural salesperson, doesn’t use TikTok and sometimes forgets to check Instagram, Morse has learned to lean into what she does best: connecting with people in person.
The obvious limitation is that there is only one of her.
So this summer, she began concentrating her efforts geographically. Instead of trying to be everywhere, she focused on building multiple touchpoints within one area through retail partnerships, events, classes and potential café relationships.
The idea is to become recognizable within a community and use partnerships to maintain that presence even when Morse herself can’t physically be there.
Forty-Seven Ideas Before the Finished Product
Customers see the finished jar.
Students see the completed workshop.
What they don’t see, Morse jokes, is her “insanely wild perimenopausal ADHD mind.”
Behind a finished product might be 47 previous ideas, a midnight note to herself, experiments covering the kitchen and countless revisions before something finally works.
Her mind, she says, is constantly connecting herbs, flavors, ideas and opportunities.
It’s chaotic.
It’s also part of the reason The Art of Staying Wild exists.
There wasn’t one cinematic moment when Morse suddenly realized the company had made it. She describes its progress more accurately as “sheer force,” backed by financial milestones, repeat customers and new partnerships that have gradually confirmed that people are responding to what she’s building.
Staying Wild, and Thinking Bigger
Morse isn’t thinking small about what comes next.
Over the next three to five years, she wants to see The Art of Staying Wild offered in more bars, restaurants, cafés and retail shops.
She wants workshops to remain central to the company.
She wants a team.
And yes, she’d like to walk into a major retailer such as Whole Foods or Target one day and find The Art of Staying Wild sitting on the shelf.
But scale isn’t the only measurement that matters.
For Morse, success means growing without losing the things that made the company worth building in the first place: clean ingredients, drinks that give people the choice of whether or not to include alcohol, education around herbs and experiences that bring people together.
It also means creating enough support around the company that the woman who built a brand partially inspired by the importance of pausing can find a little more balance herself.
And wherever the products eventually travel, Morse doesn’t envision the company’s roots moving with them.
“My home and heart will always be in the Capital District,” she said. “Upstate NY will remain our home base while seeing how far we can take it from here.”
Perhaps that’s ultimately what staying wild means.
Not refusing to grow, but making sure that as you do, you don’t lose sight of where you came from, what you care about or the person you were before everyone and everything else started competing for your attention.
For Jennifer Lee Morse, that philosophy has gone from an idea to a jar, from a jar to a business, and from a business into something she hopes can grow far beyond Upstate New York.
The roots, however, are staying right here.