EP-316 Amber Rosado of Mason Jar

If you’ve gone job hunting in the past 15 years, you may have sought out new professional challenges, a different geography, or more money, but there’s an ever-important part of the process for many that seeks out a harmonious crossover of personal and professional. I know I’ve looked for some semblance of that, where I don’t want my job to define who I am as a person, but I do want who I am as a person to influence how I go about my job, and ultimately, how much I may enjoy it. On a hunt to feel fulfilled, it’s perhaps inevitable, and in a healthy way, it’s needed, too.

In this conversation, we’re lucky to hear from Amber Rosado, who has tracked a career path from restaurant server into the beer industry, and now as brewer at North Carolina’s Mason Jar Lager Company. At every step, she’s sought a deeper connection to what she does through who she is—using her personality, family history, and culture—and also found ways to bring along loved ones for the ride.

If you’re a beer enthusiast and have friends or family in your life who don’t feel the same passion but like to turn to you for ideas, inspiration, or guidance for what to drink, you’ll enjoy Amber’s stories of using new found skills and experiences to help those closest to her. Or maybe you’ve reflected recently on your own career path and how you strive to find ways to create excitement and meaning, in which case you can probably relate to how Amber has seemed to find her place in beer instead of other areas of hospitality or beverage alcohol.

Most of all, one of the things I appreciated hearing from Amber is the perspective of someone who has come of age as a drinker and a professional at a time when the stodgy rules of categories and what to drink when are blurring and being reshaped. Amber’s family may have guided her in what she enjoyed before, but it’s her hands-on work, a love for beer, and a pursuit of new ways to create flavor that drive her today. This conversation is going to be meaningful to you like it was for me because of how all of these things come together—Amber’s past and present creating a new and exciting future as a part of the beer industry.