She breezes into the offices at New Belgium Brewing Company fresh off her motorcycle, blue eyes sparkling ready to tackle the discussion of 40 head on. She stops and looks down doubtfully at the camera. “Is this a photo interview too?” she asks. “Geez, I would have worn a little makeup or dried my hair; it’s all matted down from my helmet! ”
Unaffected, Casey swipes on some tinted lip balm and jumps right into the interview.
Although she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business with an emphasis in finance from Colorado State University, she knew that wasn’t the career path for her. “I went into to college really just trying to grow my own personal knowledge and I had the most credits accumulated toward the finance concentration, so that’s where I ended up.” No Wall Street career for this one, however.
Nearly 10 years ago she started at New Belgium Brewing Company as a “Sales Ranger” (representative), serving most of the western half of Colorado, servicing accounts all over the region. She was on the road five days a week but loved it.
Within a few years she moved on to be an event manager, where she basically “went to all these awesome mountain towns and threw parties and everyone was always happy to see me.” These events required a lot of driving however and physical labor with keg transport and setup/teardown. Even though it was tough, Casey loved the drives, surrounded by gorgeous scenery sometimes for up to three hours at a time.
A miscarriage in 2006 and the eventual birth of her first daughter in 2007 heralded a major lifestyle shift. Lugging kegs wasn’t feasible with a swollen belly and long hours on the road weren’t conducive to care and feeding of a newborn. As is the case with many members of the New Belgium family, her title shifted and she moved into a new position as an administrative assistant to the company’s “eventers” (event directors) and eventually as the executive assistant to the director of sales. Casey and her boyfriend welcomed their second child, another daughter in March 2010, “at the ripe old age of 39” (she adds with a sly smile and giggle).
She and her boyfriend have been together and committed since 2004, wear rings on their left hands, but don’t have plans to marry. “I would avoid it if I could,” Casey adds, “I guess if at some point our kids would like us to get married…If they felt weird about it or something, then I guess I’d do it.” The morning of the interview came after a rather sleepless, kids-up-most-of-the-night, leading Casey to wonder out loud if she “would be crazy to think about more kids when I see how tired I am at times like this.”
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