Listen Here
Christa Campbell cares deeply about her team and her customers. Her focus on the little things, her desire to help others, and her dedication to her people all serve her well in her role. She takes a very personal approach to leadership and is very involved in the efforts her team members take helping their water customers solve challenges. Her journey to the water team was really interesting and she had a ton of insight about not only working in the water space, but at Esri as well. She has a diverse background with unique experiences that have helped her grow and develop a really successful team.
Christa leads the industry solutions water team, creating a strategy for the water industry and guiding the content and information that customers receive. Christa needs to help other people; she wants her customers to have a good experience working with her team and she loves how engaged in the water community her team members are. She says they are a passionate crew with a wide range of experience both in the industry and at Esri. What they all try to come together about is how best to communicate with customers and how can they provide content that best benefits their users. I really enjoyed the focus Christa has on the water community as a whole, how invested she and her team are in that community, and how much she emphasized that we’re all in this effort around water together.
Esri’s water team is highly proactive, hosting regular events where users can engage with the team, ask questions, and learn more about product offerings specific to their industry. Christa has high expectations for how she wants the water group to engage with customers and encourages her people to be on the front lines for messaging about everything going on in the water space including potable water, wastewater, irrigation, water resources, rivers, streams, lakes- everything relating to water up to the oceans she says. As Christa describes it, they create a wide array of content from conference sessions to webinars to articles in an effort to bring together outreach products that educate and inspire the water community around GIS.
You can tell from our conversation that she is truly passionate about the issues the world is facing with regard to water. She is a huge advocate for her customers, but she also emphasizes how important the partners are to the mission. She believe that it is really important to help the water community because it is oftentimes underrepresented and has less awareness for their challenges than do other utility industries. The people working in the water sector do so much to improve our daily lives, our overall health, and the well-being of our planet, we really need to make their jobs easier however we can. One thing Christa especially enjoys is engaging with water professionals from around the world. She says they bring such an amazing perspective and she finds it really interesting to hear how they tackle challenges in their respective areas of the world. What was interesting to me about this was hearing her discuss the similarities of challenges in the water sectors around the world. While, of course, there are specific issues facing some communities, overall the topics people in this field are dealing with are very similar in nature. It felt very connective to hear Christa talking about common challenges across the water community around the globe.
I had an incredible time chatting with Christa and I enjoyed my conversation with her beyond words. I learned so much about her experiences and what drives her to do this work in the water industry. Christa says, “Esri makes you feel good about the work you’re doing,” and it’s certainly a truth for me. Jack and Laura Dangermond make the world better; their leadership at Esri sets the bar high not only for their employees, but their customers and users around the world. They challenge us to find ways to do good for the planet, however we can. Christa definitely lives up to their example with her determination and motivation to help the water community, not only through her efforts at Esri, but also beyond.
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