How’d you get here, Julia Eshleman?

Rarely is our career path a straight line. This is another in a series of stories on the various journeys employees have taken on their way to Tri-State. This edition features Julia Eshleman, creative director in the Brand Communications and Creative Services department at Tri-State's headquarters in Westminster, Colo.

Eshleman has been with Tri-State for nine years. She recently was named a national Top Women in Communications recipient for the Class of 2026, in the category of “Dynamic DO-ERS, and will be recognized at a luncheon in New York City in March 2026. 

What was your first job?
I worked at Camp Bow Wow.

What did you take away from that experience that you use today?
You shouldn’t make prolonged direct eye contact with people (or dogs).

What do you do at Tri-State?
I help direct/concept videos, create campaigns and branding, annual meeting design, cohost the Tri-State podcast, and a lot of ad hoc design and production work.

How does your work connect with Tri-State’s strategy map?
To me, external communications is the way to show that Tri-State walks the walk when it comes to member needs, our mission, values and strategic goals. We work in an extremely complex industry with a lot of moving pieces and a lot of stakeholders, and our job is communicating what we do in digestible ways to those stakeholders to get them to rally around Tri-State. (Or at least understand us.)

Who was most influential in your job/career choices and why?
Not really a who, but I decided to go into graphic design after visiting the Alphonse Mucha museum in Prague on a high school trip. It was the first time I understood how much freedom you could have as a graphic designer.

What did you focus on in college or trade school or other education? Are you working in that field?
I went to art school for graphic design and minored in printmaking. I am working in the design field, but at the time I was emotionally prepared to be an over-educated barista.

What is a mistake you made that turned out to be a learning experience?
I got fired from my first big girl design job. It was a blessing in disguise because if I hadn’t gotten fired, I would’ve kept trying to make it work. It made me realize you can’t brute force all your problems.

When you were a kid, what did you want to do when you grew up?
I wanted to be a paleontologist. I got one of those kits as a kid where you try to dig out the plastic dinosaur bones from a block of dirt, ran out of patience, and then broke the block and ripped all the bones out. (A short-lived dream.) The ankylosaurus is my favorite dinosaur.