meet the brujas
JR & India are a dynamic duo of community advocates and strategy consultants. Together they make MAGIC!
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Over 20 years of combined experience in marketing and outreach
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Equity-centered marketers
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Authentic relationship builders
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Responsive, emergent strategists
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Partners, not contractors
JR
JR is a mixed kid from Chicagoland. She loves nerding out about strategy and always has an idea to get us started. JR’s energy is contagious, and her commitment to love & community shines through. JR has a Taurus sun, Gemini moon, and Libra rising. She is obsessed with her two chihuahuas and loves being Auntie Jamie to dozens of young people.
Follow her on LinkedIn.
India
India is LOUD Nuyorican from the Bronx! She gets excited about building bridges and celebrating community. Indie knows that representation matters whether you're 2, 12, or 72! She's a total Gemini, but the fiery Aries moon and calming Cancer rising keep her grounded. A practicing bruja, adding magic to all facets of life is Indie’s driving force.
our story
Before you can fully understand by the brujas, you need to understand why we exist in the first place.
by the brujas was founded by Jamie Rasmussen and India Phoenix, but the foundation of the work began long before the two ever met.
In 2020, during the upheaval of the global pandemic, Jamie and Indie independently walked away from traditional career paths in search of something deeper. For Jamie, the shift was rooted in justice. For Indie, it was rooted in rest.
After years of working in marketing, advertising, and public relations, Jamie entered the nonprofit and public policy world while processing both personal grief and the collective racial reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd. After losing her father, she turned her energy toward community organizing, systems change, and advocacy work. She became a founding volunteer of the BIPOC Alliance, an organization she and Indie would later co-lead, and earned her Master of Public Policy and Administration from Colorado State University.
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Indie’s path looked different, but carried its own transformation. After years working in education, she became a stay-at-home mom during the pandemic. Motherhood brought joy and purpose, but she also found herself craving creative fulfillment and intellectual expansion. In the quiet hours before her children woke up and after they went to bed, she began freelancing as a copywriter and social media manager, slowly rebuilding a relationship with storytelling, creativity, and herself.
That work is ultimately what brought the two together.
In 2022, Jamie, then working with the BIPOC Alliance, hosted a networking event for women of color. Indie attended, hoping to expand her network and find community. What happened instead felt like something straight out of a 2000s rom-com meet-cute. The two connected instantly and have been inseparable ever since. Platonic soulmates, collaborators, co-conspirators, and eventually co-founders.
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Later that year, as her children returned to school and the world slowly reopened, Indie began thinking about returning to full-time work. She had an idea for a marketing agency called Branding Brujas, a concept that blended her love of storytelling with her spiritual grounding, creativity, and belief in the power of narrative.
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And as she often does, Jamie helped make the vision bigger.
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Drawing from her background in media strategy, communications, and leadership development, Jamie pushed Indie to think beyond marketing. After all, India had a whole master’s degree in leadership development sitting in her back pocket. Together, they carried a deep understanding of strategy, systems, communication, and community building.
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The business grew slowly and intentionally. While building By the Brujas, the two were also helping grow the BIPOC Alliance, where they both served on staff and later became co-directors. Brick by brick, relationship by relationship, the work evolved organically.
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What started as an extension of Indie’s freelance work quickly became something much larger than a marketing agency.
It became a space where storytelling, strategy, leadership, equity, and community could coexist.
It became an opportunity to help organizations communicate with more honesty, build stronger relationships, and align their work with their values.
It became the intersection of both women’s journeys:
Justice and rest.
Policy and creativity.
Leadership and storytelling.
Systems change and human connection.
Two separate paths converging into one shared direction.
by the brujas exists because we believe strategy should feel human, leadership should feel sustainable, storytelling should honor people’s dignity, and community should always remain at the center of the work.
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That’s the magic.