Publicist Rockstars: “Know your worth” with Fabiana Meléndez

I had the pleasure of interviewing Fabiana Meléndez. Fabiana is a publicist at Zilker Media, an end-to-end brand management agency focusing on digital marketing and public relations. As public relations professional with a wide breadth of experience she has worked with clients ranging from award-winning restaurants, top hospitality and lifestyle brands, B2B tech enterprises, non-profits, thought leaders and more. Through her dedication to communication strategies and industry know-how, Fabiana generates above the fold worthy press, drive event attendance and boosts social media presence.

Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I went to St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas and was originally pursuing a degree in forensics in order to either become a medical examiner or funeral home director (how funny, right?!). I quickly realized that this particular career choice would require in depth knowledge of advanced math and the hard sciences — two areas I recognize are not my strong suit. I met with my academic advisor and let her know I couldn’t realistically pursue forensics and she let me know that she thought I was very eloquent and had great networking skills and should consider a career in public relations. I switched my degree plan and subsequently had my first PR internship at Circuit of The Americas… and the rest is history.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began at your company?

Working at Zilker Media is interesting in itself! It’s difficult to narrow my experience down to just one interesting story or occurrence as I find that many interesting things can happen on my day to day. I think this speaks to the nature of PR in general. No one-day is the same!

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

One of the funniest mistakes I made while starting out in PR was forgetting to BCC journalists while sending an event invite. I hadn’t done any active pitching or outreach up to this point in my career and my boss at the time told me to “BCC everyone” on her behalf. I thought I had misheard her and proceeded to CC everyone…