Candace Loya (B.A. 2003) Community Content Manager, Esri
Candace Loya (B.A. 2003)
Community Content Manager, Esri
The English major “taught me to be an excellent storyteller,” says Candace Loya.And as the Community Content Manager at Esri, Candace gets to tell various (true) stories about the Esri company, its cutting-edge software, and its customers.
Esri is a leading Geographical Information Systems (GIS) company based in Redlands, with 80 distribution offices around the globe and over 4,000 employees. Candace oversees a range of online content about Esri in live-blogs, social media, and other forums.
Prior to coming to Esri, Candace worked in communications positions requiring other genres of storytelling. She was an editorial assistant for the Los Angeles Newspaper Group and a web content writer for Loma Linda University Health. As well, she served as a congressional aide, writing speeches and policy documents and representing a local congressman at community events. More recently, Candace worked as a communications strategist for Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP), where she coordinated internal and external company communications.
The ability to write flexibility across her career, says Candace, is rooted in her time as an English major: “I developed a unique skill set to write any type of content—technical, contractual, web-based, journalistic and educational—for any audience.”
Candace graduated from CSUSB with her B.A. in English (Creative Writing Track) in 2003. Although she started in another major, she switched to English after taking the English Grammar class: “I fell in love with the English language when I saw the word-by-word breakdown of sentences, everything from modals and sentence trees to subjects and predicates. It was amazing.”
For students wondering whether an English degree is practical, Candace’s experience-informed advice is reassuring: “Organizations are looking for people who know how to write well . . . This means being able to tell any story in any medium.”And English majors are built for that. As Candace encourages current students, “You chose a degree in English because you love a good story. So tell it.”