Storytelling Expertise
Real, Human Stories
I make audio stories that illuminate impact and interconnectedness.
The Approach: Individuals lead the storytelling process on their terms, while I work to uncover the emotional core—sensory details, relationships, stakes, and resolution. I've refined this method conducting 500+ interviews on StoryCorps Field Production teams and as lead collaborator on Voices of a Flyway, a National Geographic Explorer project following songbird migration into communities surrounding six endangered ecosystems.
Why it Delivers: Participant-led storytelling is a transformative experience. Storytellers connect more deeply with their own narratives when invited to set boundaries and speak to what matters most. The result? Stories that ring with real emotion and bring the joys, struggles, systems, and solutions in their communities vividly to life.
Explore examples of this work below.
Highlights: The StoryCorps Mobile Tour + Voices of a Flyway
Strategic Campaigns
I build campaigns pull the audience in, resonate on a gut level, and remind them exactly your mission is THEIR mission.
The Approach: It’s all about stakeholder alignment. I pinpoint where your end user, storyteller, audience, partner, and funder priorities intersect. I then build a campaign laser-focused on that intersection, facilitating strategic win-wins that get everyone authentically invested.
Why it Delivers: This approach establishes a shared strategic vision we can move towards while centering our storytellers' experience in ways that celebrate them, affirm their agency, strengthen trust & brand loyalty, and generate singularly powerful, personal stories. The result? Campaigns that hit key objectives with a one-of-a kind voice — humanizing your impact, inspiring action, and staying with audiences long after the campaign ends. See this methodology in action in my StoryCorps Studios portfolio .
The StoryCorps Studios Portfolio
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connectRN, a startup technology platform that connects nurses to job opportunities & community, was looking for a nationally-recognizable brand partnership to elevate and humanize their brand and reenforce to prospective users that listening to, respecting, and uplifting nurses’ lived experiences is a core value of their business. The result was connectRN’s first ever pop-up activation in Chicago, IL featuring the StoryCorps Studios-led storytelling experience “The Conversation: Nurses Speak Up.” Explore the campaign.
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KIPP Northern California aimed to maximize their 20th Anniversary with a campaign that strengthened pride and affiliation among community members and underscored the schools’ impact for donors. StoryCorps Studios recorded stories of joy, progress, and connection from students, parents, and teachers and produced a set of short-form stories and montage that served as the centerpiece of their 2022 Impact Report, Fundraising Gala, and Fall social + newsletter campaigns. Explore the Impact Report & story collection.
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PBS American Experience wanted to enhance the launch of "The Harvest" and "The Busing Battleground", a set of documentaries on public school desegregation Boston and Mississippi, by offering audiences multiple ways to engage with diverse integration stories alongside the films’ release. For the companion campaign “Pain & Promise: Remembering the Fight for School Integration,” StoryCorps Studios expanded the projects reach and representation by recording 100 additional perspectives nationally and producing 10 uniquely intimate short-form stories that American Experience used to engage audiences across digital & social platforms. Explore the campaign.
Audience Experiences
I create live events that leave audiences feeling connected, heard, and galvanized to keep engaging.
The Approach: Create interactive experiences that provoke both discovery and belonging by offering multiple ways for audiences to engage with individual stories and see their community reflected back in diverse formats. I facilitate active participation from the start and always close with actionable opportunities for attendees to stay engaged.
Why it Delivers: Celebrating the uniqueness of their stories and their connection to a larger whole is a viscerally poignant for audiences. Holding space in varied formats for both individual expression and shared identity delivers a powerful affirmation. Attendees leave feeling not only seen and valued, but more personally connected to those they experienced the event with—including your organization for facilitating it.
Photography by/courtesy of: Bonnie Zerr, WJCT Public Media | Tony Firriolo, Orlando Health | KCUR & The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art