CEO Profile
Candida Mobley-Wright
President, Voices, Inc.
Voices Inc.’s CEO and President Candida Mobley has always used her voice to empower her community. As a veteran media and communications executive, she built Voices, Inc. with one goal in mind – to relay information to the urban community that may otherwise not be heard.
Ms. Wright began her career in radio at the Stevie Wonder owned station KJLH-FM. She went to KJLH simply wanting to educate an audience about the importance of exercise through a short 20-minute program. After going on the air with this out-of-the-box concept, her classes were soon filled and her show was breaking ratings records for its timeslot. The station rewarded her by giving her a DJ slot, but during the overnight shift.
She quickly learned that the midnight hour was a time the station played their mandatory public service announcements (PSA’s). She was disheartened because it was important information that was not being heard by the wider Los Angeles audience.
Instead of just asking why these messages were going out when people were awake, she saw an opportunity to set herself apart and start a company—Voices, Inc.
As a major turning point in her career, she turned these questions into a goal to create a voice for her community. She quickly learned the ins-and-outs of radio production and began seeking corporate sponsors and allies in the government sector. Her idea became a highly profitable syndication tool where she married 30-second PSA’s with 30-seconds of “sponsored by” consumer bulletins and called them “show-mercials.”
She called her first radio vignettes “In the Know” and it became an overnight sensation and was soon being requested and broadcast at the top black radio stations throughout California. And the company’s radio syndication model was seen as revolutionary in getting public education messages into the difficult to reach African American community.
Over the years, Voices Inc. has evolved from a radio production and syndication company into a full-service communications agency specializing in social marketing. With Ms. Wright at its helm, she is using her expertise as a radio veteran to develop award-winning campaigns that view the media buy as one element in the arsenal to reach out to the urban market. She has assembled a team of communications experts that know how to reach the urban market where they live, work and play.
Voices, Inc. received the “Partnership Award” from the U.S. Census 2000 and has received congressional recognition for their efforts on behalf o the community and the government.
More recently, the agency won the coveted PRSA “PRism Award” for PR Team of the Year, Diversity Campaign of the Year and Radio and TV PSA’s of the Year for their work on the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s Emergency Preparedness campaign “Just Be Ready: Prepare Together.”
