Welcome to The Westrn! Here, you can expect at least two long reads each month from Nicole Qualtieri.

For over a decade, I’ve been deeply enmeshed in the world of outdoor media, gear, and content-driven performance.

But it was by accident that I managed to stumble into hunting and fishing as the medium in which work happened.

How accidental was it?

I saw a job on Craigslist for a Social Media Community Manager for a television show called MeatEater. I’d never heard of it. Somehow, after a summer of backpacking and a whirling thought of pursuing a career geared toward storytelling, I got the job. I started in December 2014, and thus began an education in a world I didn’t even know to visit.

Read: Um. It was pretty damned accidental.

Fast forward eight years, and I’ve run the gamut with a few great brands. I worked for MeatEater via Zero Point Zero Productions. There, I also worked with other big names in the industry in social media and television shows, including Randy Newberg and Remi Warren. But, with MeatEater as the bread and butter of my work, I was able to grow our social media audience from around 100,000 at the time of my hire to over half a million when I left. Additionally, I delved into managing brand partnerships, building e-commerce through Shopify, and planning events.

After two and a half years, I traded the for-profit world for a gig with the public lands advocacy group Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (BHA). I continued to grow with the many hats a non-profit requires one to wear. I managed the entirety of the robust website, doubled down on social media, and started, edited, and managed The BHA Podcast & Blast with the inimitable Hal Herring — which is still in production today.

I left BHA in March of 2018 to dive into a more creative life as a freelancer, but a chance article written for GearJunkie blossomed into something much bigger. There, I became the publication’s first long-term Hunting & Fishing Editor, and I pumped out hundreds of articles on my own with thousands more edited as part of the small, badass, and nimble editorial team.

For four years, I focused on gear, traveled extensively, and wrote like a banshee. And in the summer of 2022, I jumped ship once again to swim in a new current of professional growth.

Over the past three years, I’ve directed marketing efforts for multiple brands, grown my freelance portfolio substantially, and used this best-selling Substack as a place to play with both words and print. In 2025, The Westrn published two newsprint magazines for our niche audience.

And now, this Substack is my playground for writing. Subscribing helps support my career in public service, as I teach high school English and creative writing at a Title I junior and senior high school.

Thanks for being here! Any questions? Send me an email at qualtieri.nicole@gmail.com.