Welcome to my newsletter!

You're here, and I'm doing a happy dance.

The internet is overflowing with chaos and cat memes, but you chose to be here. OMG! Thank you. You’re amazing.

My goal with this newsletter is to be your marketing mentor in newsletter form.

Each week, I’ll share something I wish I had known when I was first starting out—the stuff that took me years to truly understand—the epiphanies, the sparkly and career-altering “ah-hahs!”

Some of these will be about marketing, others about how to find success and fun at work. I’ll tell you about the existential questions that plagued me in my 20s and share colorful insights from my life as a Boricua in Austria. Listen, my brain is a confetti bomb of ideas, so I’ll give myself creative license to write about all sorts of stuff. I hope you’re OK with that. :)

New issues will be published on Thursday mornings at 6:30 a.m. ET because that’s the time my kids wake me up every day.

If you’d like to connect with me, you can do so on LinkedIn or through my website. Thanks again for being here. Let’s do some marketing magic.

Hola, I’m Rita

This section is a terrible (but humble) brag. I want you to trust that my marketing musings are legit and worth reading.

So even though this is so cringe…here’s why I’m qualified to write this newsletter:

• I have nearly 20 years of experience working as a marketing leader and strategist for brands such as NPR, Time Inc, Zillow, and Qualtrics.

• My marketing courses (part of the Global Career Accelerator) are taught across hundreds of colleges in the US, from NYU to UM, UT, Harvard, Georgetown, etc. Check out the course trailer here (aka, my Hollywood moment). I’m also a senior lecturer at WU here in Vienna.

• Currently, I’m the Head of the Academy at Semrush, where our free courses reach hundreds of thousands of learners every year.

On a personal note…. I was born in San Juan, PR but live in Vienna, Austria with my family. I love Bad Bunny, plastic pink flamingos, and my Kindle.

Why subscribe

When it comes to marketing, I believe this much is true:

𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿, but it has become crazy complicated. Leadership doesn’t understand it, and early-career marketers (many of whom work remotely) bear the brunt of this.

I 100% get how hard it is to be a marketer these days. That’s why I’m here.

Here are some of the topics I will cover:

1. Marketing Fundamentals

2. Marketing strategy examples

3. Existential questions that kept me up in my 20s

4. Stories of my own mistakes and blunders

5. Exercises to get your strategic marketing mind flowing

6. Advice to thrive in an office environment

7. Everyday musings from my life in Vienna

I’m gonna get vulnerable and real in hopes that you can learn from my mistakes and, more importantly, so you know that whatever your challenges are at work—you’re not alone. No shame in corporate bathroom tears. I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit.

Who I write for

When I write this newsletter, I think of my students, who are either considering a career in marketing or just getting started. But truly, my writing is for any marketer who wants to learn how to be more strategic and successful at work.

If that’s you, yay! If not, you should still subscribe because marketing skills will help you no matter what you do for a living.

Before I say goodbye, I want to thank you one last time for being here—especially you, because you read this to the very end. I’m so excited to be on this journey with you.

¡Vamos!