By: Madi Wimmer
After a winding career path and an unexpected opportunity during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sonja Babich ’10 became the owner of the company she once dreamed of working for.
In 2014, Sonja Babich ‘10 met the publisher of Minnesota Bride and immediately saw the career she wanted. A career she knew would fit her and change her life for the better: working for Minnesota Bride, a regional wedding planning media brand.
The publisher had reached out to Babich, who was then the director of sales and marketing at a golf club, to tour the wedding venue. But Babich remembers that the publisher was just as interested in learning about her as she was in seeing the property.
“How cool would it be to have her job?!” Babich said.
“I want her job someday,” she told her husband, Chris, that night after just meeting the publisher of Minnesota Bride.
Five years later, she became the publisher of Minnesota Bride. Ten months after that, she was promoted to group publisher. Just one month before COVID-19 changed the world, the owner filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. When the pandemic hit, the company furloughed its team, leaving Babich with an unexpected challenge that would change the course of her career.
But Babich’s path to her career wasn’t straightforward.
When Babich graduated from Concordia in 2010, the country was still recovering from the Great Recession, making the search for a job more difficult for recent graduates. Instead of waiting for an opportunity to come to her, Babich took a job selling shoes at Nordstrom.
“I’m not gonna wait around for a job. I’m gonna get a job.” Babich said.
She said she was the number one shoe salesperson on her first day. She knew, however, that it wasn’t going to be her long-term career, so she moved on to an executive assistant position at a financial firm, where she learned how to be organized.
She then took a job at a food marketing firm but realized that the corporate environment wasn’t right for her. The experience showed her how important work culture and collaboration were to her, lessons that would later influence the kind of company she wanted to build. Rather than continuing down a career path she didn’t enjoy, she reached back out to the general manager at the golf club where she had worked in college as a beverage cart attendant.
He told her they had actually been waiting for her to reach out and offered her a position as director of sales and marketing.
Returning to her hometown was not what Babich had envisioned for herself after college.
“I never thought I would go back home,” Babich said. “And I honestly dreaded it. But then when you come back, you value it more.”
Once she returned, Babich became deeply involved in the community.
She served as president of the Sartell Chamber of Commerce and helped launch the Sartell Convention and Visitors Bureau. She spent eight years at the golf club, where she eventually planned around She spent eight years at the golf club, where she planned around 500 weddings, an average of 62 a year, and increased sales by 80% by the time of her departure in 2018.
It was at the golf club that Babich’s passion for weddings began to take shape.
In 2018, after having her second child, Sophie, Babich was ready for a career change. She wanted her next chapter to be something she genuinely cared about rather than simply taking another job.
“I was very picky about what my next chapter would be, because you have to be proud of the legacy, right? It’s one life to live. and I need it to be something that I’m passionate about,” Babich said.
Rather than applying everywhere, Babich kept her eyes and ears open and waited for the right opportunity. She did not apply for anything for five months while she took care of Sophie.
Five months later, the publisher of Minnesota Bride announced she was leaving. Babich reached out to a connection internally at the media company, Tiger Oak Media. She had made through the wedding industry, who forwarded her contact information to the group publisher.
Not even an hour later, the group publisher reached out to Babich and invited her to interview.
That conversation led ,to an opportunity Babich had first imagined four years earlier. In 2019, she became the publisher of Minnesota Bride. Six months later, she was promoted to group publisher.
But less than a year after Babich became group publisher, Minnesota Brides owner filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February of 2020, and then the COVID-19 pandemic brought the company to a standstill.
In April 2020, the company furloughed its entire team. Babich was initially sent home, but three hours later, she was called back and told she would help keep the company running and alive.
With only Babich, her boss, IT and an accounting employee remaining, she had to learn nearly every part of the business, from distribution and websites to social media and sales.
“I learned everything in publishing, from distribution to website to social media, selling, all that jazz,” Babich said.
What began as an effort to help the company survive eventually gave Babich a new understanding of the business and what she could do herself. She realized she was capable of doing most of the work herself.
She decided she wanted to buy the company, something Babich had previously dreamed of but never thought she would acheive.
Buying the company, however, was far from simple.
Babich entered a complicated bankruptcy process in which she wasn’t guaranteed to win the company she had spent the previous year putting her blood, sweat, and tears into saving.
On her way to the bankruptcy hearing in downtown Minneapolis, at the federal courthouse, her lawyer told her she had only a 40% chance of winning.
The hearing was also significant for another reason. Babich said it was the first hearing held post-COVID, and everyone in the federal courtroom was wearing masks. Despite the circumstances, she described the courtroom as lively, with people laughing and talking as the hearing unfolded.
As the hearing began, Babich’s lawyer asked if she was ready to counter the competing offer from the companies previous owner, who was trying to buy back the Minnesota Bride media company after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. She increased her offer, but there was another factor working in her favor.
By that point, Babich had built a team around the company and its brands. If the company was sold to someone else, her team planned to leave with her, which would diminish the value of the brands and make it harder to pay the company’s creditors.
The trustee explained this to the judge, who ultimately approved the sale.
In November 2021, Babich became the owner of the company she had once dreamed of working for.
“I’m 100% owner of Iron Diamond,” Babich said.
In November 2021, Babich became the owner of the company she had once dreamed of working for.
Today, she is the sole owner of Iron Diamond Media, a wedding media and publishing company that includes Minnesota Bride, Wisconsin Bride, Nebraska Wedding Day, Washington Wedding Day, Oregon Wedding Day, California Wedding Day, Arizona Bride and Austin Wedding Day. The company has also expanded into events and the Wedding Day podcast, which was approaching its 100th episode at the time of the interview. In 2024, Babich also acquired The Wedding Guys’ Unveiled and Twin Cities Bridal Show brands, expanding Iron Diamond into wedding events.
Babich is also continuing to expand the company nationally. She has announced the launch of a national luxury bridal publication in 2027, which will be available nationwide in Barnes & Noble stores, Delta Sky lounges and private airports. As of this week, she is preparing to close on another national wedding media company, further expanding Iron Diamond’s portfolio and national reach. Currently, Iron Diamond prints nearly 150,000 magazines each year and has a team of about 25 people.
Although her company is based in Minnesota, Babich’s work takes her far beyond the state. She traveled 32 times last year for work and recently spoke to wedding and event professionals in Las Vegas at Wedding MBA, and recently in Napa and Sonoma about persistence, leadership, publishing and building a career with purpose.
For Babich, the company is about more than the publications themselves. She said she loves the work she gets to do and the people she gets to do it with. Over time, members of her team have become like family.
Her connection to the company is even reflected in its name. “Iron” represents her husband, Chris, while “diamond” represents Babich herself. The name reflects the partnership between the two and the role their relationship has played in the life she has built.
But building a successful company has never meant putting her personal life second.
“I just didn’t want to stop my family dreams as well as my career dreams,” Babich said.
Babich and her husband, Chris, a 2009 Concordia graduate, have three children: Unto, Sophie and Annika. She said her family has been a foundation for everything she has built, especially her parents and grandparents, who owned businesses themselves.
“Family is definitely like the foundation of my career to get here from my parents and the family businesses I’ve been associated with, and of course my husband,” Babich said.
Despite traveling extensively for work, Babich has chosen to keep her home base in Minnesota. She lives in the childhood home where she grew up in the Sartell/Rice area.
She once expected that she would become a “New York girl” or “California girl,” but now values having her roots in Minnesota and being able to raise her children in the same community.
“Everybody thought I was going to be the New York girl, the California girl,” Babich said. “But yeah, I guess I got all the worlds now. I got my foundation, my home ground. It feels good to raise my kids here.”
The persistence that helped Babich navigate the bankruptcy process did not begin when she became a business owner. She traces it back to her time at Concordia.
Babich entered Concordia with the vision of majoring in communications and minoring in art and business, but eventually found her way to focusing only on communications and art. She became a double major in communications, with an emphasis in public relations, and art studio, with a printmaking emphasis.
Her time in the art department became especially important. Babich originally planned to minor in art, but (since retired) Professor Heidi Goldberg encouraged her to pursue an art studio major instead.
That encouragement stuck with Babich, as did another moment involving Goldberg. When Babich wanted to take an art class that was already full and she didn’t get into the classshe would have needed to minor in art at the time, she asked Goldberg to let her know if a spot opened. Rather than giving up when there was no immediate opening, Babich kept checking in daily. Eventually, someone dropped the class, and Goldberg emailed Babich to tell her she could take the spot. In her email, Goldberg shared with Sonja, “It pays to be persistent.”
“That’s my word: is being persistent,” Babich said.
Her involvement on campus extended beyond the classroom. Babich was a Homecoming co-chair and orientation leader, and she participated in corn feeds where she met alumni. She said she had always enjoyed planning events and found opportunities through Homecoming to combine leadership, organization and creating experiences for other people.
At the same time, she was developing a creative side that many of her classmates may not have seen. She spent late nights in the art studio working on printmaking, sometimes staying until 2 a.m. while also helping plan Homecoming.
She remembers the art department especially fondly. During her senior year, she was the only student working in the printmaking area and eventually sold a piece at the senior art gallery for $115. The piece, a crow with pearls, was inspired by the lights near the Red River.
Looking back, Babich said she wishes she had known her professors even better while she was a student.
Her experiences may not have looked like a direct path to becoming a CEO, but Babich said Concordia taught her to use every opportunity around her. She described those experiences as part of the “toolbox” she carried with her after graduation.
“You take everything that you learn there, and you go influence the world,” Babich said. “Don’t be scared. Be proactive. Be persistent. Be nice.”
For many current Concordia students, figuring out what the future may look like and answering the daunting question, “What will I do after graduation?” can make us feel like our time as Cobbers is coming to an end, even though it has just begun.
But being a Cobber doesn’t end after graduation. It is rooted in us, and the lessons we learn here help shape who we become. No matter where the future takes us, we are all connected, from alumni who graduated decades ago to the students who now walk these halls. We are all Cobbers, and within us we hold a connection that continues long after we leave campus.
Are you a Concordia alum, or do you know one who has a story to share? If you’d like to be featured in a future installment of Where Are They Now?, reach out to Madi Wimmer at mwimmer@cord.edu.
