For more than a decade, I’ve worked at the intersection of the outdoors, storytelling, and marketing. It wasn’t a path I planned.

In 2014, after a summer spent backpacking and searching for a career centered on storytelling, I answered a Craigslist listing for a Social Media Community Manager at a television show called MeatEater. I’d never heard of it. I got the job anyway, and what began as a happy accident became the foundation of my career.

I joined MeatEater through Zero Point Zero Productions and helped grow the brand’s social media audience from roughly 100,000 followers to more than half a million. Along the way, I expanded into brand partnerships, Shopify e-commerce, event planning, and worked alongside industry leaders including Randy Newberg and Remi Warren.

After two and a half years, I moved from the for-profit world to the conservation nonprofit Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. There, I managed the organization’s website, led social media strategy, and launched and edited The BHA Podcast & Blast with Hal Herring.

In 2018, I returned to independent work. A freelance assignment for GearJunkie grew into a full-time role as the publication’s first Hunting & Fishing Editor. Over the next four years, I wrote hundreds of stories, edited thousands more, traveled extensively, and covered everything from conservation and public lands to gear testing and backcountry hunting.

Since 2022, my work has broadened beyond editorial into brand marketing, communications, and consulting for companies across the outdoor industry. Alongside that work, I’ve continued freelancing and building this publication.

Formerly known as The Westrn, this Substack began as a collaborative home for long-form journalism and two limited-run newsprint magazines. Today, it has evolved into something more personal—a place to share essays, observations, and stories from life on a small Montana farm and the wild places that continue to shape me.

Thanks for being here.

If you’d like to reach out, you can always find me at qualtieri.nicole@gmail.com.