Author: Rafaela Jinich

What is your current role?

I’m the Co-Founder and CEO of Tequila Casa Dragones. As Chief Executive Officer, my main responsibilities are to create, develop and manage a portfolio of sipping tequilas, and lead our entire team in the U.S. and Mexico.

What led you to start a tequila company? Did you always have that interest in the food or alcohol business, or was it a sudden inspiration?

While completing my undergraduate program in Mexico City, I was studying business administration and was selected by the Japanese government to represent Mexico in a program in Japan. As part of my training for this program, I was invited to travel all over Mexico, visiting many different, top industries of the country in order to learn about them and be able to speak eloquently about Mexico’s economy.

As part of those trips, I was invited to go to Tequila, Jalisco, for three days to visit agave fields and different distilleries. At the end of the trip, I called my parents and told them, “I know what I want to do. I want to go into the tequila industry.” I was really taken by the beauty of the plant and the whole process.

When I had the chance to go to Japan, I began to truly understand how tequila serves as a window into Mexican culture. Meaning, when you ask people from around the world about Mexico and you ask them to name five things that represent Mexico, tequila is almost always part of that answer. The idea that tequila is truly a part of the social fabric of Mexico really captivated me. So I began to prepare for a career in the industry. 

I worked in management consulting after finishing my undergraduate in Mexico, and then I did the Medill IMC program. I also took as many courses as I could at Kellogg, to complement my experience. When I graduated, I went and knocked on the doors of the tequila industry thinking that with my background I could get a pretty good job. And that’s how I got started.

After working for a decade for the oldest and most established tequila producer in the world, I realized that I have the heart of an entrepreneur.  I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs and when I was younger I embarked on many small entrepreneurial ventures. So, after a decade of working for someone else’s company, I realized that I wanted to run my own business.

I started obsessing about the opportunity of becoming an entrepreneur in the tequila category, producing my own tequila, and really having the opportunity to deliver the best possible product. That’s where my journey to build my own company started.

How did your experience at Medill shape your approach to entrepreneurship and to the whole marketing aspect while building your company?

I can’t just attribute it to one thing or another specifically.  However, I definitely think that having the opportunity to go through the IMC program and take other important classes as well, such as entrepreneurship, gave me more ammunition for my career. The opportunity to go to the top marketing school in the U.S. really gave me a very wide perspective of not only marketing, but also of public relations, advertising, direct marketing statistics, consumer behavior, and entrepreneurship, which completely opened my perspective. I would say it’s really a combination of factors. I believe that having had the opportunity to go to Northwestern was and will forever be a turning point in my career.

When you came to Medill, did you envision a future plan, and once you graduated, did you still have that same vision in mind or did Medill change your perspective?

Medill confirmed my interest in going into brand management. When I graduated, I began looking for a role in brand management in the tequila category. I think the classes that I took and how I approached what I was learning helped, and as my career progressed, I was able to keep many of these learnings   as real anchors and real support for my own experience.

I didn’t know that I was going to be able to become a successful entrepreneur. Coming from Mexico City, having had  the opportunity to go to Medill, and to receive a scholarship, was in a way very entrepreneurial for me, and gave me valuable experience to become an entrepreneur. 

How has the Medill network helped you throughout building your career?

I did an internship in an advertising agency, and that was really interesting because it was a window into the world of advertising and marketing, and ultimately brand building. Then, when I graduated, it was very helpful to be able to leverage many of the different companies that had come to Medill. I knew I wanted to go into the tequila industry, and I had to use my own network to accomplish that. However, I tried to stay close to the university because I believe that the impact that it had on my career was truly important.

Can you speak of a time that stands out to you from your time at Medill?

When I graduated, they gave me the Arthur E. Tatham award, which is given to a student with a standing promise in marketing communications. That was a pretty big moment for me. Plus, it was a monetary award that enabled me to actually have a little bit more money to be able to wait for the right job, which was incredibly helpful.

Other things stand out as well, such as the impact from some of Medill’s excellent roster of professors, such as Stanley Tannenbaum, who is no longer with us. His role in the advertising world was really incredible, the way that he taught us and the way that he inspired us was a great experience. We also had the chance to work with the speech writers that had worked with Bill Clinton, for example. It was always so exciting to be able to be sitting in front of such experienced professors, whether in media, writing, journalism, or in advertising.

Finally, what still stands out to me were the people that I met there, the richness of the program, the beauty of Chicago and Evanston, and the high academic level of Northwestern. Since then, I’ve been back to both Medill and Kellogg for different invitations. It’s really an extraordinary school and I feel very proud and grateful to have a connection to it.

How has your work at Medill made a difference in your career?

I immediately went into brand management and it helped me find my passion. Of course, tequila is my passion, but in the end, it’s all about building a brand, a successful product, and a very high-quality product. So, I think that my experience at Medill helped me understand that there was a real passion for me in this field, and it gave me the tools to get there and actually do it.

If you could give advice to someone who’s entering Medill or thinking about joining Medill, what would you tell them?

The university has so much to offer that it is up to the student to make that really work for you. You need to be truly curious about what you’re learning and be proactive and interactive with your professors and accept the challenge. If you do, you’re going to get so much out of the experience and gain valuable skills for your life.

For me personally, Northwestern also awakened an interest in academia; it infused me with the idea of constantly looking for new courses. It’s up to you to really stay curious.

1. What inspired you to go to Medill?

I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in broadcast communications from Carroll College in Helena, Montana, but my true love was in magazines. After researching Medill’s magazine journalism program, I told myself I was going no matter what, if I got in. I moved to Evanston to start the MSJ program a few months later not knowing a soul, and it was the best decision I ever made.

2. What did you specialize in at Medill, if anything?

Magazine journalism.

3.What is your favorite Medill moment(s)?

Two stick out to me. The first was doing man-on-the-street interviews during Methods class at the start of the program. Hitting the streets of Chicago in the dead of winter and trying to convince strangers walking by to do an interview with us, while getting our equipment set up and functioning in single-digit
temperatures, was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done. It was a turning point for me not only in my career, but in my life. I’d always been considered shy and one to stay in my lane, but that exercise helped me to gain the experience and confidence I needed to break out of that shell.

The innovation project was a highlight of my time at Medill. Our class, which graduated in December 2010, chose to create the first digital magazine designed for the iPad, which had come out that spring. Building this product from the ground up —for a medium that had not been done before — provided me with a breadth of new skills that I use to this day, more than a decade later. That included navigating through tough challenges with a team, delegating, managing technology failures, understanding design
and UX, defining your audience, negotiating, business planning and even pitching to venture capital firms.

4. What did you do right after Medill?

I started my first post-grad job as an assistant editor with McKinsey & Company, working on the firm’s McKinsey Quarterly business journal, in downtown Chicago a month after graduation. I spent several years there before moving to Atlanta to become managing editor for Jezebel, a print magazine published
by Modern Luxury. Next, I moved through a series of editorial roles at Connect, overseeing print and digital magazines for four individual segments of the meetings and events industry, before being laid off unexpectedly from my role as editor-in-chief there in fall 2017.

5. How did you go about launching your freelance career?

I’d always viewed becoming a freelancer as my ultimate goal, dreaming of working for myself but imagining it would happen further into my career than it did. Jobless overnight after my layoff, I decided to try freelancing for a while to get me through the holidays, after which I figured I’d apply for new jobs.
The first person I reached out to was a friend who’d graduated from the magazine program with me at Medill, who was then working as an editor with Real Simple. She gave me the opportunity to write a couple digital stories for her (I still recall, it was best holiday gifts for parents, and for brothers), and I
earned my first national media clips because of her generosity. It gave me the confidence to begin pitching other national publications, and within a few months I was writing for Shape, Cooking Light, Reader’s Digest and others. At the start of my freelance career, I would write about anything, for any publication I could. Over the past five years, however, I’ve worked to develop a strong personal brand as a writer covering topics I enjoy. Now, I’m known for my writing about travel, food and golf, and my top outlets include Travel + Leisure, AARP The Magazine and Southern Living, among others. To this day, I find how strong a Medill connection goes. Before pitching a new editor, I always check their LinkedIn page to see where they went to school. I’ve found that when I reach out to a fellow Medill alum and mention it in the first sentence, the response rate is nearly 100 percent.

6. How did you then launch your own business, Pitchcraft? Can you summarize what it is in a few
sentences?

Pitchcraft is a technology platform connecting independent PR professionals and small PR agencies to freelance journalists and editors in the national consumer lifestyle space. We put the “relations” back in public relations through a series of resources designed to foster relationships among writers, editors and
PR — including weekly personal interviews with freelance journalists, weekly calls for members only, monthly workshops with freelancers and editors. Our business model includes paying all our journalists and editors, showing we value their time and expertise.

It began in March 2020, when I decided to host a Zoom meeting to bring together writers and PR pros to discuss pitching during the pandemic. It evolved into monthly paid workshops that regularly sold out. I decided to roll it into an ongoing membership with resources our members could access at any time, and that would build community. My husband, Derrick, left his corporate job in May 2021, and together we built Pitchcraft and launched in December 2021. Together with our growing cohort of members and network of journalists, we are working to shift the transactional nature of the media industry into one that’s relationship based. Being journalist-led sets us apart from any other PR software company. We have big things planned for 2023 to continue to grow and spark foundational change.

7. How did your Medill training help you in your career, either as a writer or business owner, now? 

I wouldn’t be where I am today without the skills and connections I developed through my time at Medill. One thing I’ve come back to time and time again is the program’s journalism ethics course. We live in a time where anyone can call themselves a freelance writer if they’re able to pitch and get an assignment from an editor, but not everyone has the foundation of what being a journalist means, from an ethical standpoint. That’s of increasing importance in a world of fake news and much noise in the content space
online.

The connections I established through Medill have been invaluable. It’s amazing to see where my fellow classmates have ended up in their careers, and to keep in touch with them and turn to each other as resources years later. There’s also an unspoken bond among alumni, even if we didn’t go to school together, that establishes trust and camaraderie from the start. For instance, I’ve had many writers and editors who are Medill alums join Pitchcraft as guests, who’ve immediately said yes after learning of our Medill connection.

8. What advice do you have for incoming MSJers? 

When you start your MSJ program, clear out any extraneous noise or distractions in your life so you can focus 100 percent on the work. You get out of it what you put into it. Yes, it’s going to be hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it. Yes, you’re going to be forced into situations that make you uncomfortable. You’ll learn from them. Yes, you’re going to make mistakes (I once wrote a headline that was read aloud to the class that was so embarrassing, I can’t bear to think of it do this day). You’ll get through them and never make them again. Also, spend time getting to know your classmates personally. These will be your lifelong friends, colleagues and peers whom you can always turn to for advice and support.