Meet Roza Marchenko

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Roza Marchenko a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Roza Marchenko with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?

My work ethic comes from discipline, purpose, and faith.

Music was my first teacher. As a classically trained violinist, I learned that progress isn’t always visible, but persistence matters. Mastery is built through repetition, refinement, and patience. The violin demands honesty—either you put in the work, or the music reveals the truth. That discipline shaped the way I approach everything in life.

My parents reinforced this by living with intention. Hard work, to them, was never just about effort but about meaning. Every decision carried weight, guided by something larger than themselves, whether for our family or the world around them. Their example taught me that work should have direction and that persistence without purpose is wasted energy.

In Hollywood, I saw another layer of this. The industry is unpredictable, relentless, and built on relationships under pressure. Working alongside my husband and business partner, Marco, I saw what authentic leadership is like—not control, but trust, honesty, and respect. I learned that the way you navigate challenges with others is just as important as the work itself.

Entrepreneurship brought its challenges. Launching ONE OF US Mezcal meant stepping into the unknown and applying everything I had learned—discipline from music, purpose from my upbringing, and resilience from filmmaking. But even with these, I’ve understood that not everything is within my control.

That’s where faith comes in. I give everything I have, then let go. If I work with integrity and intention, I trust that the rest is in the hands of the Creator. That belief keeps me grounded, reminding me that my role is to build, create, and commit fully, then allow things to unfold as they’re meant to.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

This chapter of my life began at rock bottom—experiencing one of those inappropriate business meetings, trying to help my family leave Ukraine and find safety in the U.S. when the war began, all while watching the entertainment industry shift beneath my feet, making years of effort vanish overnight.

It would have been easy to feel paralyzed by it all. But that’s not how I operate. Instead of waiting for a way forward, I created one.

For six months, I researched industries where our skills and talents could translate into something real. That’s when I landed on mezcal.

Marco (my husband and business partner) and I had always enjoyed mezcal, but something was missing. Nothing we tasted fully resonated with our palate, and no brand reflected the aesthetic we loved. That gap sparked something in me. A mezcal like that didn’t exist…yet. And just the thought of it made my heart race.

And that was it. An idea was born.

The next step was bringing Marco on board. I walked into our home office, blazer on, backed by research, analysis, and well-prepared answers to the big questions: Why? What? I pitched him the mezcal venture. His first reaction?

“Cool … but how do we even start an alcohol brand?”

Good question. I was already ahead. In a nutshell, I handed him a plane ticket to Oaxaca, Mexico, with a note: We’ll figure it out.

He went. I prayed. When he came back, he brought something more than just mezcal. He had found Jacinto, a Maestro Mezcalero who wasn’t just making mezcal; he was distilling something unique. His secret recipe had been passed down through generations, rooted in the wisdom of his Zapotec ancestors. But beyond his mastery, it was his heart—faithful, kind, and full of light—that showed us we had found our partner.

A beautiful human being.

He is ONE OF US.

Fast-forward to today. ONE OF US Mezcal launched just a month ago. What started as a wild idea in one of the lowest moments of my life has become a future built on exclusively producing exceptional mezcal crafted at our very own distillery in Oaxaca, Mexico. Along the way, we met people who, at moments, felt like angels, guiding us exactly where we needed to go and becoming a part of this story.

Every detail, from the spirit to the design, is intentional. ONE OF US is about the moments it enhances, the conversations it sparks, and the people it brings together.

Now that we’ve launched, the focus is on growing, refining, and elevating the experience of sipping ONE OF US Mezcal. True luxury is presence—the stories we live, the experiences we share, and the moments shaped over a perfectly crafted spirit.

While mezcal is my main focus, I continue to develop film and TV projects through Spacebrain, where storytelling remains at the heart of everything Marco and I do.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Looking back, one force has defined how I move through life: discipline. But not in the way most people talk about it.

Discipline, for me, isn’t about rigid rules or external validation. When I was trained in violin, I wasn’t the best player. If I treated the music as just a technical exercise, I could easily forget the piece. But when I let myself feel the music in my body first, before translating it into sound, that’s when I performed at my best. That’s how I approach everything. Following a formula is great, but being fully present in the process, letting it move through you rather than forcing it, and staying consistent is a daily practice for me. And when exhaustion comes, as it does for all of us, I simply take a pause, rest, and return to it the next day.

That same discipline is what allows vision to unfold.

Vision doesn’t come to me fully formed, it reveals itself as I move. Some of the most defining moments in my journey have come through what I call happy accidents—the unexpected turns, the imperfections, the things that only reveal themselves when I am already deep in the process.

I try listening to that quiet inner voice, the one that doesn’t shout but calmly insists: Step in. Start. Trust. Instead of forcing the vision to be fully formed before taking action, I allow myself to exist in that space between what I see and what I am creating. I try to stay there as long as it takes. And when that happens, I remind myself not to cling to the first version but to let it evolve, trusting it to grow beyond me.

How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?

After two dedicated years of building ONE OF US, our mezcal is finally out in the world. The challenge now is bringing it to the right people with the resources we have at this very moment. Sometimes, it feels like there isn’t enough to make things happen the way I imagine them, which isn’t necessarily true. Still, my brain has a talent for overreacting, treating uncertainty like a life-threatening crisis when, really, it’s just a Tuesday in the life of an entrepreneur.

Overcoming this stage is its own challenge but also an opportunity. The more I lean into it, the more I realize that figuring things out is the creative process. And when you’re doing it with the right people who believe in your vision as much as you do, it stops feeling like an obstacle and starts feeling like momentum. That also stands for Spacebrain Entertainment and our film and TV projects.

So yeah, hopefully, this interview will be one of those moments where the right person discovers ONE OF US—not just because it’s an exceptional mezcal, but because the story and intention resonate on a deeper level. After all, we humans are wired for connection, for meaning. And when something feels right, we know it.

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