The first cans of salsi had started moving down the production line when it hit Diana Nino.
For nearly a year, Nino and her husband had spent their evenings and weekends working through formulations, federal regulations, packaging decisions and the logistics of importing blue agave from Tequila, Mexico. Now, 12,000 cans of their sparkling agave cocktail were rolling off the line.
“It was surreal,” said Nino. “We went from knowing nothing about the alcohol industry to having this intensive knowledge.”
Nino (BBA ’17), who studied international business and marketing at FIU Business, is building salsi while working full time in financial technology. It is the latest turn in a career marked by a willingness to follow an opportunity, even when it disrupted a more predictable plan.
A transfer student from Broward College, Nino found her first marketing internship through an FIU job portal shortly after arriving at the university. The position, with Alexion Pharmaceuticals in Brickell, quickly moved beyond typical intern assignments. She learned to build presentations, manage spreadsheets and run Excel automations.
Nino later left a potential full-time role to intern with LVMH, then moved to San Francsico without a job lined up. There, she eventually landed a role at Facebook, now Meta, managing content moderation, before moving deeper into technology and marketing. Her career would later include roles at Uber and Klarna.
Over time, Nino found her niche in marketing technology, learning how to code emails, build automated campaigns and use customer data to personalize messages. She now works at Step, a fintech company that helps young people establish credit histories before they turn 18.
That mix of marketing fluency, technical knowledge and startup experience has proved useful in launching salsi.
Nino leads the brand, outreach and customer-facing side of the business. Her husband, a civil engineer turned software engineer, handles financial modeling and operations. Both have kept their day jobs while developing the company.
The 12-ounce canned cocktail is made with 100% blue agave spirit, coconut water, salt and green tea. Nino describes it as falling somewhere between a hard seltzer and a traditional cocktail.
Its identity, however, comes straight from Miami.
Born in Hialeah, Nino spent her early childhood in Miami Lakes before her family moved to Fort Lauderdale. Her father, an FIU alumnus who grew up in Westchester, shared his memories of Arbetter’s, South Beach and runs to Farms Stores, the drive-up convenience stores commonly known in Miami as “La Vaquita.” Her mother, who was born in Caracas, Venezuela, maintained many of her family’s cultural traditions at home.
Nino drew on those experiences when developing salsi, positioning the beverage around the informal family gatherings common in many Miami households.
“We wanted to create something that belonged in the moments we grew up around,” Nino said. “Good food, good conversation and people staying a little longer than they planned.”
salsi’s initial retail rollout includes four Total Wine locations in Florida. For Nino, producing the first cans was not the result of a carefully mapped career, but the result of repeatedly stepping into unfamiliar rooms and staying long enough to learn.
“Be open and adaptable,” she said. “Don’t be afraid to ask for help and put yourself out there. So much more good can come of it than bad.”