In ELLE’s series Office Hours, we ask people in powerful positions to take us through their first jobs, worst jobs, and everything in between. This month, we spoke with Bertha González Nieves, the CEO and co-founder of Casa Dragones, a small-batch tequila company beloved by celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart. González Nieves’s journey started in college, when she visited Tequila, Jalisco, in Mexico, and promptly fell in love with the spirit. “I felt so excited since day one that I found a subject matter that truly seduced my intellect,” she says. “Every day, [I’ve] wanted to learn more.” After more than a decade of working in the industry, González Nieves launched Casa Dragones in 2009, with the intention of crafting a premium sipping tequila. She’s since become Mexico’s first female maestra tequilera. “We see ourselves as explorers,” she says of her and her team. “We represent the tequila lover, and we go out there and come back with great news of things that have never been done before.” Below, she describes the serendipitous forces behind her business, including how she met her co-founder and why her wife became part of the team. Plus, she shares how, through tequila, she’s able to tell a nuanced story of “an extraordinary country.”

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