Hello,
I'm Sonia C. Arellano
I am an technical writer with over a decade of experience engaging with research writing in higher education and government environments.
My main skills include technical writing and editing, data visualization, and multimodal document design. In other words, I make various types of documents look and read even better. The types of products I work with include grant applications, study participant communications, and scientific dissemination, among others.
Over the past two years, I’ve been sharpening my science writing skills, working with investigators from varied scientific disciplines on their research projects.
This website is currently in transition.
Please stay tuned for a much-needed website redesign. If you’re interested in learning more about my background, see below for an abridged version of my career path so far.
My Journey to Technical Science Writing
I believe that who I am and what I value always affects the work I do and the perspective I provide. I have always valued human knowledge and clear communication of that knowledge to positively impact the world. Although this sounds abstract, it’s been the throughline of my professional lived experiences since I can remember.
My early adult experiences were key to shaping these values. After college, I taught English in Spain for 1.5 years. Upon returning to the US, I pursued a Master’s degree in Literature from Texas State University, focusing on the migrant farmworker experience (as I come from a family of migrant farmworkers myself). Next, I moved to Tucson, Arizona, to complete a PhD in Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Arizona. While my Master’s degree facilitated my interest in studying human stories, my PhD taught me to systematically and rigorously study how humans strategically and effectively use communication to achieve a particular end goal.
Upon completing my PhD, I moved to Orlando, Florida, where I worked at the University of Central Florida for six years, until receiving tenure in 2023. While at UCF, I held various administrative roles and learned a lot about creating change through storytelling, policy, and practice.