Women in the Cigar Industry: Karina Owen, Part 3

Something personal before any of this begins.

I have been working on Karina Owen’s story for a few months now. Sitting here writing the last part of it, knowing it is finally going out to you, I am not only glad. Some of what she said has gone in deeper than I expected it to when I sent her the first question, and I am in no hurry to be finished.

Now, a word about Women Who Shape the Cigar Industry.

That series is not a slot we fill. It exists because of something I keep running into and have struggled to put into words, and Karina Owen has just described it better in four sentences than I have managed in a year of writing about it.

Read the next few lines slowly. If they land the way they landed for me, you are one of the people who can help change it.

There is a sentence in this final part of the interview that stopped me cold.

Karina Owen brings her husband to cigar events on purpose. People walk up to him. They shake his hand. They assume he is the one who owns the business, and they start talking to him about it.

She stands there and lets it happen. Every time.

“That’s good,” she says about it.

Call me dramatic if you like, but reading that gave me the feeling that time had slipped backwards. A room where the man is assumed to be the one who works, and the woman is assumed to be there with him. Cooking, cleaning, waiting at home. We are not supposed to be there any more, and in that room, for a few seconds, we are.

Then read her answer again. She is not hurt by it. She is collecting evidence.

Table of Contents

Karina Owen on being a woman in a cigar room

“Sometimes you have to establish credibility before you’re even given the benefit of the doubt. A man can walk into a room and people may assume he belongs there.

“As a woman I may have to demonstrate my knowledge. Not being arrogant, but confident. Showing I’m here to help, not overstep.”

She adds something about herself that is unusually self-aware, and it reaches back to Part 1.

“Being taught by a man in a family business is different. My gestures, my movements, may mimic if not posture like the man I was taught by.”

Sit with that for a moment, because it is a strange and quietly sad thing to notice about yourself.

She was taught to read a room by a man who commanded them, which is where Part 1 begins. She learned it so young that his bearing went into her body. The way she stands, the way she moves, the way she waits before speaking, all of it came from him.

And she still walks into those rooms and has to prove she belongs there.

Now look at the other half of that answer, the part that is easy to read past. She says she has to show she is there to help, not to overstep.

A man who demonstrates what he knows is called confident. She has to demonstrate what she knows and manage how it lands at the same time. Two jobs instead of one, in every room, every time, for years.

If you are a man in this industry and you have never had to think about that, this is the paragraph to sit with.

I asked whether there was a moment she knew she had been underestimated.

“Plenty. But time will tell. Percentages will show. Sales will go through the roof. The better moment is when you realize you don’t need to convince them anymore. You just perform.”

“Results are a beautiful way to introduce yourself.”

Stop trying to convince people who already decided.

You know exactly who I mean. The one who smiles while you explain yourself for the third time and has not heard a word since the first. The relative who still introduces you by the job you had five years ago. You keep going back because you want them to see it.

They will not. Not because you explained it badly. Because they were never listening.

Every hour you spend on that is an hour off your own work, and the work is the only thing that ever changes anybody’s mind anyway. Shut up and go build. Let them find out from somebody else.

Has being a woman ever been an advantage? She does not take the easy answer.

“Not really. Understanding people is an advantage. Listening is an advantage. Knowing when somebody needs to be pushed and when they need to be given space is an advantage.

“I don’t believe I have to act like a man to compete with men. I just have to be very good at being me.”

And on whether the growing number of women in cigars is real:

“There is real change. But visibility isn’t the same thing as influence. Putting women in the room is one thing. Giving them a seat at the table, letting them make decisions, letting them build businesses and earn respect based on results, that’s different.”

Visibility is not the same thing as influence.

That line is the reason this series exists.

It would be easy to run a women in cigars feature that is really just a photograph and a job title. Plenty of them get published. The woman is in the frame, the number goes up, and nobody is any the wiser about what she actually knows.

That is not what these articles are for. They exist to put what these women know on the record, at length, in their own words, so that it cannot be waved away as decoration. A seat at the table, as she puts it, rather than a place in the picture.

Karina Owen has given five thousand words about reading people, building trust, protecting a name and surviving the years nobody sees. Judge her on that. It is all she asked for.

And one more thing while we are here, because this is the part I keep thinking about.

Next time you see a woman with a cigar in her hand, stop for a second and be honest about what you assumed in the first second. A woman sucking on a stick, or the most knowledgeable person in that room about what she is holding.

One of those is a guess. The other you could find out by asking her a single question.

That assumption is not mine, and I am not going to pretend it is in order to make a point. But somebody made it in a room she was standing in, and they walked away certain they had done nothing at all.

Why she built under her own name

Karina Owen does not use her maiden name. In an industry where that name opens doors, she made a decision to find out what she could do without it.

“Because I needed to know what I could build with my own name.

“There were rooms I was not brought into. There were occasions I was left out of, and reasons given that did not hold up when I looked at how other people were treated. I laughed along at the time. That is what you do. Then one day I noticed I had stopped feeling it at all.

“My family gave me a foundation and a tremendous education in this industry. I’m grateful for that. He gave me a guidebook of the do’s and don’ts. But gratitude and identity are two different things.

“I wanted people to know Karina Owen. Not somebody’s daughter. Not somebody’s connection. I’m proud of the teachings. Now it’s my turn to show the industry who I am.”

That is the whole series in one answer.

Think about what that actually cost her.

In this business her family name is a key. It opens doors, it shortens conversations, it explains who you are to a room before you have said a word. She was handed that key at birth.

She put it down. On purpose. And went to work without it.

Which means every door she has opened since took longer than it had to, every introduction had to be earned twice, and every result had to be hers before anyone would believe it.

Then notice the two sentences she puts side by side, because most people cannot hold both at once. Gratitude for the education. Refusal of the identity.

She does not tear down what she was given in order to claim what she built.

That is rarer than it sounds. Most people who break away have to make somebody the villain first. They need the old place to be rotten so that leaving looks like courage instead of choice. It is easier to walk out of a burning house than to walk out of a good one.

She walked out of a good one. On her own two feet, with her thanks on the table, and no story about anybody else.

Rings of fire: what the hard years taught her

Karina Owen describes obstacles as rings of fire. I asked her which was the biggest one she has walked through, expecting a single event.

“Probably the accumulation of it all. People often want to identify one dramatic moment that changed you, but life rarely works that way. Sometimes it’s family. Sometimes it’s money. Sometimes it’s disappointment. Sometimes it’s gossip. Sometimes it’s someone who doesn’t want to speak to you directly, so they choose another person to carry the conversation for them.

“Sometimes it’s simply being exhausted and having to get up anyway, because life doesn’t stop just because you’re tired.”

Read that list slowly, because there is no villain anywhere in it.

Money. Tiredness. Disappointment. Gossip. Somebody who will not say a thing to your face and sends it round through a third person instead.

Anyone who has worked in a small industry knows every item on that list by heart. Nobody writes about them, because none of it is dramatic enough to make a story. It is just the slow grind of ordinary days, and that is exactly what wears people down and makes them quit.

Nobody quits because of one catastrophe. People quit on an ordinary Tuesday, over nothing in particular, because the pile finally got taller than they were.

That is what gets you, and that is why it gets so many people. There is no moment to be brave in. There is only another morning.

And the way through is not heroic either. You get up anyway. That is the whole method.

She has a rule about that.

“Not everything deserves a reaction. I have to ask myself, what would I have if I stopped? What would I have if I allowed somebody else’s opinion, gossip, disappointment, or actions to determine how far I go? Nothing.

“So I get up. I keep working. I keep building.”

She is careful here. She names nobody and she is not interested in doing so.

“The hardest lessons sometimes come from people in your own backyard. People you trusted. People who knew you. Some of them smiled at me while they studied me. Some of them wanted what I was building and did not want me to be the one building it.

“And not everyone who hurts you is blood.”

She draws one practical conclusion from it about who she now does business with.

“We’re adults. We’re not children. That is exactly why I choose to deal with adults in this business. People who can communicate directly, take responsibility for their words, and understand that business relationships require maturity, discretion and respect.”

She is not asking anyone to take sides, and she says so directly: people make their own choices and she makes hers. She also makes clear she can live with people reading this and wondering whether it is about them.

What she took from it is not bitterness. It is a distinction she repeats in several different ways.

“Discernment is knowing that access and trust are not the same thing. You can be kind without being naive. You can be open without being completely exposed. You can build a village without giving everyone a key to your house.”

There is a related lesson she learned the hard way about what travels between people.

“When you work around people, stories travel. Sometimes they’re true. Sometimes they’re distorted. Sometimes they’re nothing more than someone else’s version of events. I’ve learned to listen carefully without allowing every story to become my truth.”

Somewhere along the way she changed the question she was asking.

“I stopped asking, why is this happening to me? I started asking, what am I supposed to learn from this? That question changed everything.

“You don’t always control what happens to you, but you can control what meaning you give it.”

Then she lays out what that question gave her back.

“Every disappointment taught me something. Every closed door made me more resourceful. Every person who underestimated me gave me another reason to become more disciplined, more focused, and more intentional about where I put my energy.”

There is a question hiding in that answer, and it is not a comfortable one. What is standing in your way right now, and what have you already decided it means?

She is not saying the disappointments were good. She is not thanking anyone for the closed doors, and she is not pretending it did not hurt. She is saying she refused to let any of it be wasted.

A disappointment can be a wound or it can be information. A closed door can be the end of something or the reason you learn to find another way in. A person who writes you off can take something out of you, or they can hand you a reason to be sharper than you were the day before.

And then the image the whole section builds to, which she arrived at herself.

“It’s easy to throw stones when you don’t have to live with the consequences of the choices you’re judging. I learned a long time ago that I don’t need to throw the stone back.

“Sometimes the smartest move is to pick up the stone, lay it down, and build with it.”

“So when I look back at everything that was meant to break me, I don’t see broken pieces. I see the foundation.”

Pick up the stone, lay it down, and build with it.

Every bit of advice about people who wish you harm says the same useless thing. Rise above it. Let it go. Be the bigger person. Lovely. Now tell me what to do with the rock that is still in my hand at two in the morning.

She tells you. You keep it. You put it in the wall.

Do that for long enough and the people who threw them end up holding up your house. They do not get an apology from you and they do not get your attention either. They get to be masonry.

She has one more line about all of it, and it is the shortest thing she says in the entire interview.

“My answer is my life.”

What building it cost her

Closest she has come to quitting:

“There have been moments where I was tired enough to want to. I’ve had people second-guess me. I’ve had people say ideas were foolish. But quitting and resting are two different things. I can pause. I can regroup. I can cry. I can change direction. But I’m not going to surrender the whole vision because one chapter hurts.”

Quitting and resting are two different things.

Almost nobody makes that distinction in the moment it matters, and that is exactly when it decides everything.

An enormous number of people have walked away from the best thing they ever started because they could not tell those apart. They were exhausted on a bad week, they decided that feeling was proof they were not cut out for it, and they stopped. Then they spent ten years telling the story as if it had been a considered decision.

It was not. They were tired.

She has cried over it, paused, regrouped, changed direction entirely. None of it was quitting, because the thing itself never left the table. Put it down for a week. Put it down for a month. That is allowed.

Which leaves one honest question for the rest of us on the next bad week. Is the thing finished, or am I just tired?

A genuinely bad week, now:

“Everything happens at once. Business problems. Family responsibilities. Plans falling apart. Being there for a friend when it isn’t your bad week, but you hold onto that emotion anyway. Somebody needing something from you when you have nothing left to give.

“My solution isn’t pretending I’m fine. I prioritize. What has to be handled today? What can wait? Who actually needs me? What’s noise? You can’t control every fire. You can control which one you put your energy into.”

What she has given up:

“Comfort. Time. Sometimes being understood. When you’re building something that doesn’t look like the traditional path, people don’t always understand why you’re doing it. You have to be willing to be misunderstood for a while.”

And the one I expected her to dodge, about a setback that cannot be fixed:

“You accept what you can’t control and protect what you can. Some things don’t get repaired. Some relationships don’t return. Some opportunities are gone. You grieve it, learn from it and keep moving.

“Strength isn’t always fixing something. Sometimes strength is knowing when to stop bleeding over something you can’t change.”

This is the hardest thing in the entire interview and it is aimed straight at anyone still bleeding over something that ended a long time ago.

Some things do not get repaired. Some people are not coming back. Some doors shut and that is simply the end of it, and you can lie awake replaying the conversation for another decade and the result will be exactly the same as if you had slept.

You are not keeping it alive. It is keeping you.

Strength is not always fixing it. Sometimes strength is looking at a thing that is already dead and refusing to keep paying rent on it.

She has said publicly, more than once, that she is in the middle of the journey rather than at the top of it. I asked why she says that out loud when most people in her position would not.

“Because it’s true. I’m proud of what I’ve done, but I’m not going to pretend I’ve arrived. I’m still building. Still learning. Still taking risks.

“And frankly, I think people connect more with the person climbing the mountain than the person standing at the top pretending they never struggled.”

“I’m not finished. And I’m not afraid.”

Advice for women entering the cigar industry

A good deal of this interview with Karina Owen was aimed at someone she will never meet. A woman standing at the edge of this industry, wondering whether there is room for her.

This is the section where her answers get shortest and fastest, and I do not think that is an accident. She is not composing these. She has said all of it before, out loud, to real people, probably more than once.

If you are that woman, read this part twice and then close the article and go and do the first thing on the list.

“Walk in. Don’t wait for someone to give you permission. Learn the product. Learn the business. Learn the people. And don’t confuse being liked with being respected.

“Be kind. Be professional. Be classy. Know your value.”

Don’t confuse being liked with being respected.

Being liked is something you buy, and you pay for it every single time. A yes you did not mean. A price you dropped. An opinion you kept to yourself in a room where saying it would have cost you a friend.

Being respected you cannot buy at all. It gets built out of work other people can see, and nobody has to like you for one minute of it.

There are people twenty years into this industry who are enormously well liked and whose opinion nobody has ever asked for. Do not become one of them.

If she has no contacts at all:

“The door closest to the work. Start learning. Go to the shop. Talk to the retailer. Meet the reps. Attend events. Ask intelligent questions.”

Her advice for a first year is all input and no performance.

“Spend it learning. Learn the product. Learn the business. Learn relationships. Learn how retailers think. Connect with people who do this, and invest in getting your name out.”

On what is genuinely different for a woman doing this, practically rather than emotionally:

“You may have to build credibility while simultaneously fighting assumptions. That means preparation matters. Know your numbers. Know your product. Know your market. Confidence without knowledge is just noise. Knowledge creates a different kind of confidence.”

To a woman starting later than she wanted to, or with small children at home, she gives the answer of someone who did exactly that:

“You’re not late. You’re experienced. Don’t let the timeline in somebody else’s head become the deadline in yours.

“And if you have children, don’t assume your dream makes you a bad mother. Let your children see you work for something. They don’t just learn from what you tell them. They learn from what they watch you do.”

You’re not late. You’re experienced.

Four words that could hand somebody back a decade.

There is a specific grief in believing you missed your window, and the cruel part is that the window was never real. Somebody else’s timetable got into your head at twenty-five and you have been apologizing to it ever since.

The years you spent somewhere else were not time off the thing. They are the reason anybody will listen to you when you finally get there. A twenty-two year old has enthusiasm. You have scars and a working knowledge of people. Guess which one closes a deal.

And the line about children sits right next to it. Let them see you work for something. They are not learning from the speech at the dinner table. They are learning from what they watch you do on an ordinary Tuesday when you think nobody is paying attention.

Nobody warned her about this, so she warns you:

“Some people will only support you once they can see you’re succeeding. Some people will come after you when they see you grow. That’s okay. Don’t spend your energy trying to convince spectators. Build. Eventually the results become impossible to ignore.”

And when the people closest to you do not believe in it:

“Stop needing everybody to understand it. That’s hard. Some people can love you deeply and still not understand your vision. You don’t need permission. You need conviction.”

Some people can love you deeply and still not understand your vision.

Sit with that one if the person who does not believe in your idea sleeps in your house or raised you.

It usually does not mean they are against you. It means they are frightened for you, which looks almost identical from where you are standing and hurts about the same.

She is not telling you to cut anybody off. She is telling you to stop waiting for the permission slip. Their understanding is a lovely thing to receive and a terrible thing to build your life around, because it may arrive years after you needed it, or never, and you cannot put the work on hold until then.

For the men reading, she was asked what they should do differently, and she did not soften it.

“Don’t assume the woman in the room is there because of somebody else. Talk to her. Challenge her. And don’t be intimidated by her. Give her the opportunity to prove herself. Then judge her by the work.

“That’s all I ever wanted.”

Four things. Talk to her. Challenge her. Do not be intimidated by her. Then judge her by the work.

Not one of them costs anybody anything. That is what makes the list uncomfortable.

And I will say something here that is mine and not hers, because I have been sitting with it since I started reading these answers.

If I were launching a brand tomorrow, I would want somebody like Karina Owen on it.

Not out of goodwill. Because of what the last three parts of this interview describe. When you have spent a career having to know the product, the market, the numbers and the room better than the person beside you simply to be taken as seriously, you do not stop doing that once you are. The preparation becomes who you are. The attention to the whole process becomes a habit you cannot switch off.

As a client, that is exactly what you are paying for. Someone who will know your business better than you expected them to, because they were never allowed the luxury of knowing it less.

It should not have cost her what it cost to get there. But I would be lying if I said it had not produced something worth hiring.

Her three legacies

Karina Owen does not usually bring her family into her professional life, and there are no photographs of her children in this series by her own choice. But she asked for their names to be here, and the reason is the answer to what she wants them to take from all of this.

Tristan. Chris. Kylie. Her three legacies.

She put it plainly when she asked for them to be included: from the first kick she felt, through holding them, feeding them, raising them and watching them become their own people, they have been part of every step of this. She does not usually say so in professional company. She wanted it said here.

“Your circumstances don’t get the final word. I’ve had moments where I could have become bitter. I chose to keep going and growing.

“I want my children to see that you can be knocked down without becoming somebody you don’t recognize. You can get up with love, loyalty, faith, and the people who never left the whole time.”

That is the whole thing, really.

Anyone can get back up. This industry is full of people who did, and who arrived at the top as somebody their own children would not recognize. Harder. Colder. Quicker to suspect everybody. Carrying a list of names they still check.

They won. Look at them.

She is saying there is another way up, and that it is slower, costs more, and nobody applauds you for choosing it. You arrive later, and you arrive as yourself. That is the only version worth the climb.

The cigars, and the one she never smoked

For someone raised inside the business, there is no first cigar Karina Owen fell in love with, and that is the point.

“Growing up in this industry, cigars were around me long before I understood the business side of them. For me, the cigar became less about what is the best cigar, and more about what cigar fits the moment. That’s what I love about cigars. There isn’t one answer.”

Her rotation moves with her mood.

“I’m a character person when it comes to cigars. I want something that fits the mood, the company and the moment. Some days I want something powerful. Other days I want something I can sit with and let the conversation take over.”

One hour, no phone, no obligations:

“A great cigar. A glass of bourbon. Silence. Around everyone I love.”

On the brands the industry has not caught up to yet, she declines to name one and explains why in a way that says quite a lot about how she works.

“There are a lot of people doing things right who don’t necessarily get the attention they deserve. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy what I do. I like finding the story behind the brand. Sometimes the next big thing isn’t the loudest thing in the room. It’s the one quietly doing the work.”

What a cigar actually means to her is not about tobacco.

“Connection. Some of my earliest memories involve cigars, family, travel, shops and conversations. A cigar slows people down. People talk differently when they aren’t rushing. And some of the best relationships I’ve ever built happened over a cigar when nobody was trying to sell anybody anything.”

Then I asked who she would most want to share one with, living or gone. Of all the answers in eighty-one questions, this is the shortest.

“My father.

“Whatever complicated history exists between people, there are certain things only a father and daughter understand. I’d want one cigar, one conversation and no audience.”

“I never had one with him.”

Five words.

A woman who has spent her entire life in the cigar business. Who was in the back of that car at four years old, as Part 1 describes. Who calls half this industry Uncle. Who can tell you what suits the moment, the company and the mood.

She has never once sat down and smoked a cigar with her father.

I am not going to dress that up and I am not going to explain it.

But if there is somebody you have been meaning to do something ordinary with, a coffee, a walk, a cigar on a porch, and you keep telling yourself there will be time, read those five words again.

There is no rule anywhere that says you get the chance. People die in the middle of your intention to call them. The conversation you are saving for the right moment is not waiting somewhere for you. It only exists if you make it happen.

A name came to you while you read hers. It always does.

Call them today.

Acting, trust and still climbing

Acting arrived by accident and turned into the thing Karina Owen owns most completely.

“Someone asked me at an event if I acted. I said yes. That answer opened a door I didn’t even know I wanted to walk through. And then I caught the bug.

“Business is strategy. It’s negotiation. It’s reading the room. Acting requires something different. You have to become vulnerable. You have to listen. You have to become somebody else and tell the truth through that person.

“Acting feels like the clearest dream that belongs completely to me.”

Look at where she started. Four years old in a car that belonged to somebody else’s business, in an industry handed to her, carrying a name she never got to choose.

This far into a life, she has found one thing that came from nowhere but her. Not inherited. Not expected. Not even useful. Just hers.

Most adults stop looking for that somewhere around thirty. They decide the shape of their life is fixed now and that wanting something new at this age would be faintly embarrassing. It would not. The only thing between you and whatever that is for you is the belief that it is too late, and she has just shown you what that belief is worth.

On whether an industry built on trust and handshakes survives the next decade:

“I hope so. It has to. Technology can make communication faster. AI can make things sound nice. But it cannot make trust faster than a handshake. You can have the best CRM in the world and still lose a relationship because you didn’t keep your word.

“That’s why I’m careful about whose name I put next to mine.”

What she knows now that would have saved the twenty-five year old version of her a lot of pain:

“Not everybody deserves access to you. That’s probably the biggest one. I used to think if I worked hard enough, helped enough people and showed enough loyalty, everybody would operate the same way. They don’t. People show you who they are. Believe them.

“And don’t let somebody else’s inability to recognize your value become your opinion of yourself.”

Not everybody deserves access to you.

That sounds cold right up until the week it happens to you. She spent years believing that if she worked hard enough, helped enough people and showed enough loyalty, everybody would do the same in return. They did not. Some took what was offered and never looked back. Some used it.

She is not telling you to trust nobody. She is telling you that access is earned, in installments, by behavior, and that handing it to anyone who smiles at you is not generosity.

It is a decision you have not got round to making. Make it before somebody makes it for you.

The village she wants to build

The last question was what she wishes somebody would ask her. She asked it of herself.

“What are you building all of this for? And the answer isn’t money.

“I want my children to see that you can come from complicated circumstances, walk through some very dark rooms, make mistakes, get knocked down and still decide what your life is going to mean.”

Karina Owen has one picture of what arriving would look like, and there is no business in it at all. A toast on a beach, with everyone she has met along the way flown in at her expense. Family, friends, people from her church, people she met through a screen, people whose paths simply crossed hers at the right time. No agenda. No pitch.

There is no business in that picture. Not one deal, not one brand, not one room she fought her way into.

She has spent this entire interview telling me about work, and when I ask her what arriving looks like, she describes a beach full of people who were kind to her.

She calls the whole of it a village, and she defines it like this:

“A village is being able to reach out your hand and grab the hand of the person next to you without caring how tall they are, how short they are, what they look like, or where they come from. What matters is their heart and their intentions.”

Everyone says something like that. Almost nobody means it.

She does, and you can check. Go back and look at who turns up in her answers. A nurse in an office in Arizona who told her a story. A sandwich shop that gave a twelve year old a job and whose name she still protects. A child with crackers in his pockets. Men inside prison. Her mother. Her uncle. A church. Her husband.

Not one of those people could do anything for her career. That is the point.

There was one thing Karina Owen asked for in all of this. Not a correction, not an approval, not a line about the business. She asked that the people who shaped her life be named.

So here they are, in her own words, exactly as she wrote them.

“There have been so many people who have been part of my life and my family’s journey that it would be impossible to name every single person without inevitably leaving someone out. But I want it to be known that every person who has crossed our path has mattered in some way and has helped shape the woman I am today.

“At the heart of that journey is my mother Elena, my stepfather Rick Fritz, my husband, and my children, Tristan, Chris, and Kylie. My Uncle Joe Tabares, Aunt Maria Tabares, Aunt Gloria, Uncle Salvador, and my godparents Angela and Rolando have all held a special place in my life. My cousins Monica, Eva, Jessica, Leticia, Gabe, Markie, Sonya, Connie, Abel Perez, Marcelo and Kiko, along with the entire Perez and Tabares families, are part of that foundation. So are the Benavidez family, Manuel and Mardulez, Ricky Owen, Neil Owen, the Plumb family, the Martinez family, Melissa Perales, Tony Perales, Mike Perales Jr., and the many extended families connected to them.

“And that matters to me because no one stands alone. Behind every name are spouses, children, parents, siblings, cousins and friends who have also touched our lives in ways that may never make it onto a list. I could never possibly name everyone, and I would never want someone to believe that being left off means they are any less important. There are simply too many people, too many memories, and too many connections to fit onto a page.

“I also want to honor the people I have lost and who are now in Heaven. They are not forgotten. Their names may not always be spoken, but their influence remains, in the memories we carry, the lessons they left behind, and the people we became because they were part of our lives.

“My faith has also been a constant thread throughout my journey. My church communities at St. Ann in Detroit, St. Clare in New Jersey, and St. Xavier in Tucson, Arizona, have given me faith, friendship, guidance and a sense of community.

“Along the way, there have been so many people who stood beside us: the Lunsk family,Villeco family, Bates Family, Gilliam family, Reyes family, Somerville family, my Arizona family, the Castiano family, Perloff family, Shields family, Arnold family, Floyd family, Carmody family, my NPHS family in Pennsylvania, my Kingsway family in New Jersey, the Cavsos family, Sister Carla, Carolyn, Verna Mullen, Father Grace, JJ and Kelly Neivas, Auxucianna, friends from Michigan and countless others.

“Then there are the people who came into my life through my work and the different worlds I have been blessed to experience: the cigar industry, podcasting, music, events, entertainment, acting, my vendors and customers, producers, colleagues, and the many people I have met along the way. Each chapter brought different people, different lessons and different opportunities. Some relationships lasted a lifetime. Others were meant for only a season. Some challenged me. Some encouraged me. Some protected me. Some opened doors. Some taught me lessons I didn’t know I needed.

“Some people left when I was a child and never came back. Some only showed up when life was good. And some showed up when I needed them most, expecting nothing in return, holding nothing over my head, and never asking for recognition. Those are the people I remember. Those are the people who taught me what love, loyalty and genuine support really look like.

“When I look back at my life, I realize I was never meant to do this alone. My life was built by a village of love. A village that I am still growing, still learning from, and still grateful for. A village made up of family, friends, faith, mentors, colleagues, strangers who became friends, and people who believed in me during the moments when I wasn’t sure how to believe in myself.

“And now, after everything I’ve experienced, everything I’ve lost, everything I’ve learned, and everyone who has helped me along the way, I know I’m not finished. There is still more to build. More people to inspire. More lives to touch. More doors to open for the people coming behind me.

“I want the next chapter of my life to be about more than what I can accomplish for myself. I want it to be about what we can build together. Something meaningful, something lasting, something our families can be proud of, and something that remains long after we are gone.

“So when I ask, are you willing to be part of this, I’m not asking you to stand on the sidelines and watch.

“I’m asking you to walk with me. To believe with me. To build with me.

“Because I know what it means to need a village. I know what it feels like when people show up. And I know what can happen when they do.

“I’m still here because people showed up for me. Now I want to be that person to show up for you. That, to me, is what a village is.

“And that is the kind of legacy I want to leave behind.”

Read the second paragraph of that again, and then the one about the people who left when she was a child and never came back.

She names them all. The ones who stayed, the ones who only turned up when life was easy, the ones who are gone. Nobody gets left off to make the list look better, and nobody gets named in order to be punished.

Most people, given a page and no editor, would have settled a score somewhere in there. She used it to say thank you.

She is not finished, and she says so without any apology for it.

“I’m still in the middle of that story. I haven’t reached the peak. And maybe that’s the part I like most. Because if I’m still climbing, there’s still something coming.”

Then, at the very end of eighty-one questions, the only sentence in the whole interview that sounds like a woman who is done being quiet about it.

“Be ready, world. Karina Owen is a name you want to know.”

Which brings all of this back to where it started.

A car. A man with gel in his hair and a Dunkin’ coffee in his hand, who ended every working day with the same four words. A girl in the passenger seat who could not see over the dashboard and did not care.

Somewhere in the middle of these eighty-one questions she gave those words away. Not to her children, not to a client, not to anybody who could do anything for her. To a stranger with a dream that nobody around them believes in.

She did not seem to notice she was doing it.

“Stay true to yourself. Work with humility. Be kind along the way. And at the end of the night, when you put your head on that pillow, you should be able to say, I gave today everything I had. Then be grateful you get another day to try again.”

That is her father’s phrase, handed on.

He meant it was time to go home. She means something closer to a reckoning, and she gives it away to anyone who needs it, free, at the end of a long day, from a phone, between customers.

Whatever else is in that story, and there is more than she has told me, something good came out of that car.

What it means to be handed somebody’s life

One thing before the end, to everybody who has read this far.

Some stories in this trade are about a cigar. Some are about a brand, where it came from and what it learned on the way. And then there are the ones that go in and stay in. This is one of those.

When somebody hands you their life and asks you to tell it properly, that is not a job. It is a responsibility, and it is heavier than it looks from the outside.

Here is what I did not understand before I started. People will stand in front of you with no clothes on sooner than they will show you their life. Naked is a body. A life story is everything you did, everything that was done to you, and every call you got wrong, handed over to strangers who are free to judge you for all of it. That is the braver of the two by a long way, and almost nobody says so.

So read it as what it is. Not content. Not a profile. The good hours and the bad ones of somebody who is still living them.

Thank you, Karina. You answered eighty-one questions. You wrote most of it late at night, after full working days, from a phone, between customers, to someone on the other side of an ocean you have still never met in person. You could have given me a business profile and nobody would have thought less of it.Instead you gave me your whole life, and you did not flinch at any part of it.Thank you for being part of what makes other people’s lives better. Not as a job. As something you cannot switch off.You said the number one principle you follow is that you want to hear people’s stories. You trusted me with yours. That is a trust I value, and I am honored to have been given it.And I do not think what you have said here only belongs to this industry. Somebody is going to read it who has nothing to do with cigars. A woman who has been told to wait her turn. A parent who has not looked up from their phone in a while. Somebody carrying a stone they have been meaning to throw back. Your words have it in them to change more than one trade, and I think they will.And I was the one allowed to write them down. I will carry that for a long time.Three parts. Over sixteen thousand words. All of it yours.Thank you.

This is Part 3 of a three-part interview in the VDG Cigars series Women Who Shape the Cigar Industry. Read Part 1, Karina Owen: At the End of the Night and Part 2, Karina Owen: The Years That Taught Her People.

Karina Owen runs Consigliere Consulting, based on the East Coast. She advises cigar brands, retailers, event organizers, and individuals launching their own labels. Instagram: @staynclassyowen.