Alumnus Highlight: Cris Rivera

This week, we are talking to one of our alumni who is currently working for one of the largest vertically integrated multistate cannabis companies in the US, Cresco Labs. What can a certificate in Markets and Management Studies offer to those who are interested in working in an emerging industry like cannabis?

Cris Rivera graduated from Duke with a joint BA in Economics and Spanish; and of course, the MMS certificate. He spent four years post grad with Prudential insurance as part of a management leadership program. During that time, he rotated through various positions in the company. He loved working on the marketing of the Prudential Securities website, which is what brought him into the world of marketing and changed his education and career trajectory. Reflecting on this experience, Cris says, “In 2002, the website and ecommerce world wasn’t what it is today. Back then, we were trying to figure out that you can use digital content to sell a product. It got me into this conversation with myself about wanting to do marketing for a living.”

He decided to pursue an MBA at Dartmouth. After his MBA, he worked at PepsiCo for two years in their marketing leadership program, and Molson Coors where he worked on the Miller Light rebrand and other projects. Over 10 years, he worked his way up through the company to become a General Brand Manager. In 2018, he left Molson Coors to join Cresco Labs as their Senior Vice President of Retail Marketing and Sunnyside* Store Development.

Through various corporate positions, Cris learned that he enjoys content management and working with marketing brands. Cris has worked in the content management field for over a decade now and has witnessed first-hand many of the advancements in the industry. Over the course of this career, he points to three areas of change in content and marketing. The first of these changes is the influx of analytics and the evaluation of the effectiveness of marketing and advertising. He explains that, “Everyone has always thought of marketing as very ‘touchy feely’, but that is simply not the case anymore. The use of new and rigorous tools has helped marketers to be able to better assess if what they are doing drives the results they desire.”

The second change is the new media landscape. Thinking about this change from a marketing perspective, he explains that, “70-80% of your marketing budget goes to advertising…but nowadays we have so many emerging channels of advertising that are completely segmented…and it is a balancing act. How do you get reach without getting a lot of spillover into people who would never buy your product?”

The last change is the level of rigor that consumers expect from content and how they want to be spoken to. “The general art of communication and copy has changed. Your content can’t be subpar. It has to be editorial,” he says. Students who are interested in this field can look to leaders like Cris for advice on navigating these changing fields. 

Cris has first-hand experience marketing brands that sometimes come to audiences with preconceived opinions. He explains that as marketers, it is important to be aware of these conversations and how your communication further impacts the stigmas that surround the industry. “Everything we do is always asked with the question, ‘Are we advancing the industry’s biggest problem around solving stigmas’?”

As Cris reflected on his time at Duke in the MMS certificate program, he shared how valuable MMS was in preparing him to enter the workforce and later pursue an MBA. He says, “When I go back to the [MMS] class…I feel like I had a lot of the same conversations, structure and learning that I had in the MBA program.” In the absence of an undergraduate business degree, Cris feels that the MMS certificate was the closest thing to that experience. 

He emphatically recommends students spend time in the workforce prior to pursuing an MBA. “When we have debates in the classroom—just like we did in Markets and Management—on how to solve a problem, what is the problem, and what are potential solutions, people can pull from career experiences that help color the conversation in meaningful ways. If you haven’t had that experience, it is really hard to contribute.”

Cris is one of many MMS graduates who have shared with use the benefits of the Markets & Management Studies Certificate. Do you have an alumni story you would like to share? Contact haley.warren@duke.edu to tell us your story!