Courtney Cochran, Director, PR and Corporate Communications, Fetzer Vineyards (California, USA)

Years in Industry: 

16. I took wine classes at night while working at Universal Music Group after college, and later earned a sommelier diploma on weekends while in business school at UCLA. I started HIP TASTES Events in the Bay Area, hosting wine parties in popular nightlife spots, and wrote a lighthearted “how-to” book about wine called “Hip Tastes” that was published by Viking Studio, an imprint of Penguin Group. I hosted events and wrote about wine while consulting on marketing and PR to some of the larger wine companies, eventually heading in-house at E&J Gallo Winery, then moving to Fetzer Vineyards, where I now oversee public relations and corporate communications for the company. I’ve experienced the industry as a newcomer and media personality, and now from the portfolio business side, with a bit of perspective and appreciation for change built up over the years. Along the way I married a winemaker, completing the cliché of a life fully immersed in wine (not that I’m complaining!), and became a mom.

My Top Three Challenges to Wellness:  

At one point I recognized that a good life and career require lots of help, humility and support—the proverbial village. This recognition was important in that I started allowing myself to be more vulnerable. As I allowed room for questioning my motivations and aspirations, it became significantly easier to embrace wellness, to break patterns that weren’t serving me, and to broaden my perspective through the incorporation of lessons from others.
 
Here are a few things that are working for me right now, where wellness goes:

• Staying realistic – I’ll say it: working out on a treadmill in my home office is kind of soul-wrenching. But when I went to the doctor last year for a mid-pandemic physical, I got some much-needed affirmation that my health was okay—along with essential advice on being realistic. “Don’t expect things to look like they used to,” wisely noted a nurse, also a working mom. I jazz up my treadmill workouts with great lighting, Bala Bangles, and good streaming shows, and complement that—when time allows—with tennis clinics, virtual studio yoga classes, strength training using free weights and a stability disk, and YouTube Booty Kicker videos.

• Staying engaged – To me, what’s most important about wellness is stress abatement and creating the space to be creative, productive and fulfilled. I want to be strong and avoid injury, and have the energy to keep up with my family, so I do my best to be well in lots of small ways, without overthinking it or focusing too much on any one thing. (This logic also applies to moderation with alcohol, sugar, caffeine and the like.) This philosophy keeps the monotony at bay, and emphasizes flexibility—for scheduling, for fitness goals, for sanity. If I expect too much of myself with all the competing priorities, it’s a set-up for disappointment, and back-sliding.

• Staying excited – This is probably obvious, but wellness should be FUN. Not amusement park-fun, just fundamentally enjoyable. Being well—physically, financially, professionally—allows tremendous leeway to enjoy your life, so I do my best to work in time for the activities I love, like reading, skiing and working on home projects. We finally were able to take a ski vacation this spring, and I’m not sure what was more beneficial: the physical work of skiing a big mountain like Breckenridge, the pleasure of seeing friends for dinner in the evenings, or the joy of helping my toddler get her ski on for the first time. These are the big moments we’re working for—rather than working to work.

How I Keep It Together to Stay Well:

Sleep, asking for help when I need it, planning ahead for when I’ll need help later (“help-banking”), and sticking with the things I love. I recently took up tennis again after playing competitively while growing up, only to learn that the game has totally changed—which means I have to re-learn every single stroke. I had a brief pity party about all this before realizing that this is just one giant metaphor for life: it stays challenging, and many of those challenges are gifts for personal growth.

What Inspires Me:

Purpose. On occasion I find myself thinking, “we’re not exactly changing the world here,” as I tee up a media release or spend a few hours working on a tagline for a commercial product. Working for a company that’s a Certified B Corp allows me to align purpose across my personal and professional life, and really does help in keeping me excited about the work each day, in spite of the challenges of pandemic parenthood. I also find purpose as a board member for a regional healthcare nonprofit, the Healthcare Foundation Northern Sonoma County, which has done a lot of good particularly this past year in getting much-needed funds to frontline organizations helping with COVID relief in my backyard. Re-centering myself in my purpose—which evolves over time for all of us—is a really great check-in whenever I’m feeling under-motivated or adrift.

A Quote I Love: 

"No [wo]man is an island" (bracketed text mine) – John Donne (or Jon Bon Jovi, if you’re a fan of Hugh Grant and Nick Hornby)

You can connect with Courtney on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.