Write Your Wish: Inside Professional Writing Careers

Monica Villalobos

President & CEO Arizona Hispanic Chamber

Ms. Villalobos was named President & CEO of the Arizona Hispanic Chamber in late 2019 after serving as the Vice-President and Foundation Executive Director for seven years. In this role, she is responsible for the strategic growth initiatives of the chamber. She is also the operator of the Phoenix Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) Business Center, the Native American Business and Economic Development Center (NABEDC), and Ascend Phoenix funded by JP Morgan Chase Foundation. She is also Editor-In-Chief of eighteen research publications over the last eight years including the annual DATOS: State of Arizona’s Hispanic Market (2012-2019), DATOS Tucson (2012- 2015), Minority-, Women-, Hispanic-, Family-owned Business Enterprise Reports (2012- 2013) and the AZ Supplier Diversity (2012), Employee Resource Group (2013), Sustainability (2014), Global Trade Best Practices (2015), and Minority Business Economic Indicator (2017-18) white paper series. Ms. Villalobos is the founding principal at ResearchByDesign, a marketing research firm specializing in primary qualitative and quantitative research. She works closely with client partners to develop category specific studies as the foundation for marketing strategy decision-making.

Ms. Villalobos is scheduled to complete her doctorate at the University of Southern California in December 2021. She completed a Master of Arts in Communications degree at Seton Hall University with honors. She is also a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles with a double major in Linguistics and Psychology.

Barbara Falvey

Former Human Resources Executive

Barbara Falvey has 34 years in Human Resources, most of which was spent in executive level roles. Among her various positions in HR, she served as Vice President of Human Resources and Vice President of Organization Development & Training for Caesars World and Ameristar casinos and as Senior Vice President of Human Resources for Hawaiian Airlines.  During her tenure with these companies she oversaw a broad range of HR initiatives. She has a track record for developing creative solutions for tough HR problems and for helping teams manage through times of great change.  She holds a BA in English from the University of California, Los Angeles and a MSc. in Organization Development from Pepperdine University.

Thomas Stanton

Product Manager VMware

Stanton is a Product Manager at VMware, where he has worked since graduating from UCLA in 2020. Stanton joined VMware as a Cloud Solutions Architect immediately after graduation before transitioning into the Product Management space in the Fall of 2021. He now works on VMware’s Carbon Black Cloud, a next-gen cybersecurity product for large enterprises. Stanton’s affinity for solving problems using technology is what lured him into a career in Product Management. He hopes to eventually launch his own venture after finishing business school.

Shayan Saalabi

Product Associate | Penguin Random House

Shayan Saalabi is currently a Production Associate at Penguin Random House, where he designs ebooks for imprints like Penguin Classics and Penguin Press. Before joining Penguin Random House, he was a Production Editor at Seven Stories Press. In 2021, he started Common Use Books, an online art and design bookstore. He graduated from UCLA in 2019, where he majored in English and was a part of Campus Events Commission, The Paper Mixtape, and Satyr Magazine.

Megan Stephan

Faculty Coordinator for Writing in English Majors

Dr. Stephan serves as the English Department’s Faculty Coordinator for Writing in the English Majors; in that role, she develops, teaches, and oversees the 110 series of discipline-specific writing courses, which are dedicated to advancing students’ analytical writing skills and preparing them for their postgraduate careers. She is also one of the lead architects for the Professional Writing Minor, which launched in Spring 2019, and serves as its Faculty Coordinator. Offered in collaboration by the English Department with Writing Programs, this new cross-campus minor prepares students to excel in the written, oral, and multimodal communications of their postgraduate workplaces. It offers courses on such topics as digital writing and web literacy, business and entrepreneurship writing, and nonprofit and public engagement composition, as well as discipline-specific electives drawn from departments across UCLA. 

Her essays, reviews, and articles have been published in print and online in The Daily Telegraph (UK), Avidly (Los Angeles Review of Books), Oxford University Press’s Dictionary of National Biography, and Public Books, a digital magazine that brings essays and interviews by scholars to an audience beyond the academy.