Contributors, Partners, and Friends

Meet my friends and collaborators who contributed their wisdom to Circle of the 9 Muses. These are among the most influential and innovative thinkers in the organizational story community. I encourage you to check out their work, follow them on Twitter, subscribe to their blogs, ravenously chew into their books . . . and, in the instances where they have provided their contact information, reach out to them directly.

To the contributors who are featured here: Allow me to say once again, thank you for your generosity, your extraordinary spirit of collaboration, and your wisdom and laughter.

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Mary Alice Arthur • Story Activist

Mary Alice uses story in service of positive systemic shift and to create collective intelligence on critical issues. Her art is creating and hosting spaces for wise action, and narrative practice forms a key part of her work. Her powerful results from a telecommunications merger project were written up in the book Wake Me Up When the Data Is Over: How Organizations Use Stories to Drive Results (ed: Lori Silverman). She is a steward of the Art of Hosting and works with participatory practice all over the world.

Mary Alice's work demonstrates her belief that stories are the key to unleashing our knowledge, the wisdom is in the group, and that life is too short to have a boring meeting, an unchallenged imagination, or an uninspiring conversation. She is a powerful synthesizer and meaningmaker, valued for her ability to make the complex understandable, the simple profound, and the pathway clear.

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Madelyn Blair, PhD • Author, speaker, and consultant to management

Madelyn Blair is a speaker, author, and senior consultant to management. Her specialty is unlocking personal resilience for individuals ready for a change and for teams needing to meet today's complex challenges with greater ease. Her background includes knowledge management and institutional analysis.

Dr. Blair is a regular visiting speaker at Columbia University and is a Taos Institute Associate and charter member of the Associates Council to the Board. She is on the Board of American Friends of Chartres. Dr. Blair received her doctorate in organizational psychology from the University of Tilburg, The Netherlands, and holds an MBA from The Wharton School.

She is the author of Riding the Current and Essays in Two Voices. She is a contributing author of Lessons from the Field, Wake Me Up When the Data Is Over, Making it Real: Sustaining Knowledge Management, and Smarter Innovation.

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Bobette Buster • Writer/Producer

Bobette Buster, writer/producer of the feature documentary, MAKING WAVES: THE ART OF CINEMATIC SOUND, with Midge Costin (director) and Karen Johnson. A story consultant for Hollywood studios and major European production companies, Bobette is on the Guest Faculty of Pixar, Disney Animation, Sony Animation, Twentieth Century Fox, Catholic University of Milan, La Fémis (Paris), Screen Training Ireland, North By Northwest (Denmark).

She was a Creative Executive for Director Tony Scott (Top Gun, Man on Fire), Production Consultant with Larry Gelbart (HBO, Emmy Best Film, Barbarians at the Gate). She is author of DO STORY: How to Tell Your Story So the World Listens (Do Book Co., 2013), available on Amazon, iTunes, and favorite bookstores. A graduate and Adj. Professor of the University of Southern California's Peter Stark Producing Program, she created the first MFA curriculum for Feature Film, Television Story Development.

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Shawn Callahan • Founder of Anecdote

Shawn is one of the world's leading business storytelling consultants.

He started his career in technology with companies such as Oracle and IBM but realized, at the end of the day, it was the human factors that determined the success of any enterprise.

In 2004 he founded Anecdote, a firm that helps leaders be better oral storytellers and corporations embed their strategies using stories.

Anecdote works with Global 1000 companies such as Shell, Danone, Microsoft, and Bayer all around the world.

Anecdote licenses its business storytelling programs to companies around the globe and currently has 28 partners in 19 countries.

Shawn is based in Melbourne, Australia, and can be contacted at www.anecdote.com

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Slash Coleman • Professional Storyteller/Author

NPR calls the award-winning storyteller who shares a name with a famous guitarist “extremely provocative and entertaining,” and WGBH claims “Slash Coleman's storytelling performances have the power to change the way people think.”

The NYC based author of The Bohemian Love Diaries and a personal perspectives blogger for Psychology Today, Slash is best known for his PBS Special The Neon Man and Me and is currently creating The New American Storyteller for PBS.

Slash's performances have been featured on stages nationwide including: TEDx, The International Storytelling Center, and Pete Seeger's Clearwater Festival and included in: American Theatre Magazine, Backstage Magazine, The Washington Post, and most recently on the NPR series, “How Artists Make Money.”

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Paul Andrew Costello • Founder and President at New Story Leadership

Paul Andrew Costello is an internationally recognized expert in narrative practice, having been a pioneer of the story revolution now revitalizing leadership and coaching in the corporate world. In 1995 he formed the National Center for Narrative Studies (www.storywise.com) where he developed the signature CNS methods of Living Stories and Narrative Room. These methods helped inaugurate the famous Golden Fleece group in Washington, and have been adapted in use by his many graduates. He has applied the power of narrative to diverse challenges, including a book on Obama's election strategy (The Presidential Plot) and to global peace by working with young leaders from Northern Ireland and Ireland (www.wiprogram.org), South Africa (www.sawip.org), and Israel and Palestine (www.newstoryleadership.org). Paul's new work embraces maps as a parallel tool to stories harnessing the power of narrative to help us navigate a world that seems to have lost its way.

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Karen Dietz • Speaker, Author, Trainer, Coach and CEO of Just Story It

Karen Dietz combines the science of storytelling with the art of performing to create stories that inspire, influence, and impact a company's bottom line. Her motto says it all: “If you want results, just story it!” Karen's clients: Disney, Princess Cruises, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs.

Wiley Publishers recruited Karen to write Business Storytelling for Dummies (2013). She is also the top global curator on business storytelling at www.scoop.it/t/just-story-it with 15,000+ followers. Witness her in action as she opens the San Diego 2014 TEDx conference with the power of story listening for changing lives. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahN_FDHFWmg

Her office is actually an art gallery of her hand-dyed silk panels of favorite story principles she uses with clients. Karen partners with JVA Art Group to bring amazing corporate stories to lobby and staff areas.

She received her MA and PhD in Folklore from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Terrence Gargiulo • Organizational Development Consultant

Terrence Gargiulo, MMHS is an organizational development consultant specializing in the use of stories. For his creative work with narrative, INC Magazine awarded him their Marketing Master Award. Terrence's story-based communication skills assessment earned him the 2008 HR Leadership Award from the Asia Pacific HRM Congress. He is a frequent speaker at international and national conferences.

Terrence wrote the libretto for his father's opera Tryillias which was accepted for a nomination for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in music. In 2009, he co-founded the Occhiata Foundation to produce American operas and promote arts engagement in schools through the multi-discipline prism of opera.

Terrence enjoys scuba diving, cooking, singing, and fencing. He was a Junior National Champion, member of three US Junior World Championship teams, NCAA All American, and an alternate for the 1996 Olympics.

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Marcus Hummon • Songwriter, recording artist, composer, playwright, author

The songs of Grammy-winner Marcus Hummon have been recorded in genres diverse as pop, R&B, gospel and most notably in country music. His best known hits are “Bless the Broken Road” (Rascal Flatts), “Cowboy Take Me Away” and “Ready To Run” (The Dixie Chicks), “Born To Fly” (Sara Evans), “One Of These Days” (Tim McGraw), and “Only Love” (Wynonna). In 2005, “Bless the Broken Road” won the Grammy for Best Country Song. He has garnered numerous BMI awards, including five #1 awards from BMI.

In theatre, Hummon has written six musicals and an opera. Three of his musicals, “Warrior” and “the Piper,” and the musical-dance-hybrid “tut” were featured Off-Broadway as part of the New York New Musical Festival. “Warrior” and “American Duet” received invitations to be work-shopped at the prestigious Eugene O'Neill Summer Conference. His latest work for the theater exploring the life of Frederick Douglass will be premiered in 2015.

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Robbie Hutchens • Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, President of Signet House

Robbie Robinson Hutchens is a licensed marriage and family therapist and has been leveraging her clinical skills for 18 years. She is a clinical member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapists. Her systems training and creative mindset enable her to glean the complexities of relationships and equip her clients to manage their lives in a collaborative, refreshing manner.

Her practice also hosts a one-of-a-kind play therapy “clubhouse” that young children find engaging, safe, and fun. She supports the System of Care philosophy and is a volunteer member of the Coalition for Children's Mental Health for the State of Tennessee.

Robbie co-wrote a chapter, entitled “More Is Different: Understanding and Engaging the Exceptionally Gifted Child” in the Handbook for Counselors Serving Students with Gifts and Talents: Development, Relationships, School Issues, and Counseling Needs/Interventions, Prufrock Press, November 2011.

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Michelle James • CEO, The Center for Creative Emergence

Michelle James has been pioneering Applied Creativity, Storytelling, and Improvisation in business since the nineties. She founded the Capitol Creativity Network in DC and the Cville Creativity Network in Charlottesville, VA. Michelle is a business creativity consultant, facilitator, and coach who has designed and delivered hundreds of programs for entrepreneurs and organizations. Known for creating richly textured learning environments that weave together storytelling, improvisation, and other whole-brain approaches with creative solution finding methods and sound business practices, her work has been featured on television, the radio, and in several books. Michelle performed full-length improvised plays for 10 years and developed Quantum Leap Business Improv. She was recognized for Visionary Leadership in Fast Company's blog, Leading Change; produced two Creativity in Business Conferences and a Creativity in Business Telesummit. She's writing a book, Pattern Breaks: A Facilitator's Guide to Cultivating Creativity, due out this year.

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Billy Kirsch • President, Kidbilly Music, LLC

Grammy and Emmy nominated, CMA and ACM award- winning songwriter Billy Kirsch has harnessed the power of creativity to lead a successful life as an entertainer and entrepreneur. His body of work includes award-winning songs and career songs for the artists who have recorded them. “Holes in the Floor of Heaven,” recorded by Steve Wariner, won a Country Music Association song of the year award, was nominated for a Grammy award and was a number one hit. The list of artists who have recorded Billy's songs include Tim McGraw, Kenny Rogers, Englebert Humperdink, Alabama, Lee Greenwood, and Wynonna.

Billy's abilities as facilitator, leader, and performer are the foundation of his highly successful corporate event programs, Team Building Through Song® and Harnessing Your Creative Power. The presentations help people rediscover their creativity to become more innovative and engaged in their work.

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Kat Koppett • Founder, Koppett + Company

Kat Koppett, Eponymous Founder of Koppett + Company, holds a BFA from NYU, and an MA in Organizational Psychology from Columbia. She has lectured at Stanford, UC Berkeley, RPI, and Skidmore. Her book on the use of improvisational theater techniques for business development, Training to Imagine, has been called a seminal work in the field. In addition, Kat is a Certified Professional Co-active Coach, and the co-director of The Mop & Bucket Theatre Company.

Koppett & Company has designed and delivered programs for a diverse roster of organizations, large and small, including the Clinton Global Initiative, Apple, Facebook, Prezi, Chanel, Eli Lilly, AAA, JPMorgan Chase, Merck, Havas Health, and GE. Her most fulfilling improv gig to date is playing Mama to her daughter, Lia, who teaches her profound lessons daily.

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Per Kristiansen • Partner, Trivium

Per Kristiansen has been partner in Trivium since 2006. He spent a number of years working in the LEGO Group. First, as change agent in the Pre-School area, he then joined the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY activities, initially Executive Discovery, the start-up that developed and managed the method and later in the LEGO Company. Initially Per's role was two pronged: 1) Master Trainer and 2) Responsible for Europe and the Middle-East. When Executive Discovery was closed down and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY became part of LEGO, Per took on the role as global manager of LEGO SERIOUS PLAY.

Per has a masters degree in intercultural business, and has spent his career helping companies accelerate change and innovation, and in developing robust strategies. He has been based in Italy, Scandinavia, and in the UK. He now lives in Copenhagen with his partner Christina and their two sons.

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Cynthia Kurtz • Researcher and consultant

Cynthia F. Kurtz is a researcher, software developer, consultant, and writer who has been helping communities and organizations work with their stories since 1999. Originally an ethologist, Cynthia discovered the field of organizational narrative at IBM Research, where she conducted research projects to help IBM develop internal and client services centered around organizational stories. She built on that work at IBM's Institute for Knowledge Management and at the consulting firm Cognitive Edge before launching her independent consultancy in 2009. She has consulted on over eighty narrative projects for a variety of clients in government, for-profit, and non-profit sectors. In 2008 she self-published the first edition of her textbook, Working with Stories in Your Community or Organization. Now in its third edition, the book is widely considered a vital resource for participatory story work. Cynthia lives in upstate New York with her husband and son.

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Jody Lentz • Facilitator

Jody Lentz facilitates better teams, better meetings, and better decisions. His creative communication and innovative, visual approach help organizations think, plan and act strategically. His professional passion is engaging organizations to create high-performance, low-drama work cultures.

Since 2004, Jody's work has spanned the government, non-profit, and education sectors, as well as a wide range of established, entrepreneurial, and social business ventures.

Jody employs a deep and wide bag of tricks to transform planning meetings and workshops into lean-forward, hands-on learning experiences. One of these is “Think With Your Hands,” a workshop powered by LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY™, which Jody introduced to David Hutchens, who now uses this workshop as one of his many story-telling tools.

Jody is a native of Nashville, TN, USA, where he lives with his wife of over 25 years; they have three sons and a grandson.

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Michael Margolis • CEO of Get Storied; Founder of StoryU

Michael Margolis is a teacher, author, and entrepreneur. For 12 years, he's worked at the leading-edge of the storytelling movement. Michael helps lead the world's largest school for business storytelling. He also teaches “narrative intelligence” to companies like Bloomberg, SAP, and TATA. Michael is obsessed with how the Internet is evolving the way we approach innovation, marketing, and the humanization of business. The son of an inventor and artist, Michael has always been curious about the deepest mysteries. As a lifelong seeker, story is his yoga. Michael speaks frequently at venues including SXSW, TEDx, Google, Zappos, and UN Foundation. His work has been featured in Fast Company, Wired, and Mashable. He is also one of Twitter's leading voices on #storytelling. His most recent book is Believe Me: A Storytelling Manifesto for Change-Makers and Innovators. Michael is left-handed, color-blind, and eats more chocolate than the average human.

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Christine Martell • Principal Image Wrangler

Christine is an artist, facilitator, and consultant specializing in using visuals to deepen conversations and uncover new stories. Her VisualsSpeak® tools are used by individuals and organizations around the world who want to improve their lives, teams, and performance through surfacing other ways of looking at the world. Communication deepens and we can more fully understand what each person means by what they are saying by using visuals.

She lives in Hillsboro Oregon where she serves on the leadership team of the local arts council and other community arts organizations.

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Thaler Pekar • CEO, Thaler Pekar & Partners

Thaler Pekar is an internationally recognized pioneer in narrative and communication. Thaler guides smart leaders in finding, developing, and sharing stories that break through an increasingly complex marketplace and rally critical support. Her Heart, Head & Hand™ framework for persuasive communication is directing entrepreneurs and advocates throughout the world in increasing sales, visibility, income, and influence.

Thaler co-facilitated the opening plenary of the most recent Smithsonian Institution Conference on Organizational Storytelling. She often lectures at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Columbia University Graduate Program in Strategic Communications, and she is a contributor to the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Thaler is a long-time resident of Hoboken, NJ, and a more recent resident of Unadilla, NY. She always crosses the street to walk on the sunny side, and she has a cat named Truthiness.

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Barry L. Rellaford • President, Great Work Worldwide

Barry Rellaford's great work is to help people discover, express, and fulfill their great work, which is not only what we do, but who we are.

Barry is the founder of Great Work Worldwide, a consultancy focused on inspiring individuals and organizations to perform meaningful and sustainable work. He is also a co-founder and master facilitator of FranklinCovey's Speed of Trust practice and co-authored the business fable, A Slice of Trust (Gibbs Smith, 2011). As an international speaker and consultant, he has shared transformational ideas about purpose, trust, and leadership with people from over one hundred countries. His clients include Procter & Gamble, Kroger, LEGO, G&J Pepsi Bottling, and Ford Motor Company.

Barry and his wife, Lorilee, live in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains with their family. Barry's interests outside of work include family activities, music, reading, people development, and the American West.

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Dick Richardson • Leadeership Development Expert

Dick is a leadership development expert working with C-suite executives. Prior to owning his own consulting practice he was Director of Leadership Development for ITT, responsible for all executive and leadership development.

Prior to ITT, Dick held a variety of leadership positions in learning at IBM. His last position was IBM Director; Management Development, responsible for leadership curriculum for all IBM managers and executives. He was the founding Director of the IBM Center for Advanced Learning and holds two patents for innovations in organizational learning. Dick's international experience includes being the Manager of Management Development for IBM Asia based in Hong Kong, and numerous other overseas assignments. He has been recognized with numerous industry awards in leadership development and learning.

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Limor Shiponi, Storyteller • CEO, The Storytelling Company

Limor Shiponi is a professional storyteller and CEO with The Storytelling Company Inc, Israel. She is involved in business practices concerning strategy, marketing, and organizational culture, and is the leading social media and content strategist for tech companies and corporations in Israel. She is highly involved in storytelling—the art and practice. Her English blog is well known among professionals, being an arena for debate and deep insights about the art.

Limor's heart's desire is with music, eventually becoming a practicing orchestra conductor. Her other fields of interest are numerous and she crossbreeds knowledge while performing her favorite sport—seeking and finding deep solutions to complex issues. Her latest storytelling program ‘Honor Price’ demonstrates less-known facets of her personal interests – the ability to balance the chalice and the blade, survival, women's doings in a man's world and sustainability.

Limor is the author of Stories at Work (Hebrew, 2006)

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David Sibbet • Founder, Grove

David Sibbett is President and founder of The Grove Consultants International. He is a master facilitator and considered a leader in the booming field of visual facilitation. The Grove is based in San Francisco and is hub to a global network of associates, partners, and other visual practitioners.

David is author of the best-selling Visual Leadership Series from John Wiley & Sons, including Visual Meetings, Visual Teams, and Visual Leaders. David is also designer of the Grove's Sustainable Organizations Model, the Drexler/Sibbet Team Performance System, the Grove's Visual Planning Systems, and author of The Grove's Facilitation Series.

He holds a Masters Degree in Journalism from Northwestern University, a BA in English from Occidental College, and a Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs. In 2013 he was awarded the Organizational Development Network's lifetime achievement award for creative contribution to the field of OD.

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Lori L. Silverman • Strategist, owner, Partners for Progress®

Lori L. Silverman has authored Stories Trainers Tell (with Mary Wacker, Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 2003), Wake Me Up When the Data Is Over: How Organizations Use Stories to Drive Results (Jossey-Bass, 2006), and Business Storytelling for Dummies (with Karen Dietz, PhD, Wiley, 2013). Bright House Networks, APHL, Lydig Construction, Homewatch Caregivers, and conference attendees have benefitted from her highly energized, practical, results-driven approach to the subject as a hands-on consultant and keynote and workshop presenter. Lori's also showcased tangible outcomes from workplace story use on more than 70 radio and TV shows.

As owner of Partners for Progress®, for 25 years she's facilitated enterprise-wide change and strategic planning initiatives for organizations such as American Family Insurance, the American Legion Auxiliary, Bechtel, Chevron, Duquesne University, Valmet, and the U.S. Air Force Reserves. Lori holds an M.S. degree in counseling and guidance from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and an MBA from Edgewood College.

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Annette Simmons • Author, Trainer, Speaker

Annette helps organizations uncover their truth, and tell it. Her first two books focused on uncovering truth within organizations. A Safe Place for Dangerous Truth (1998), and Territorial Games: Understanding and Ending Turf Wars at Work (1997) showed how to reveal hidden agendas, unproductive internal “stories,” and how to better manage group dynamics so teams thrive and flourish. This experience taught her the emotional clarity and power a story brings to messages of every kind. Her groundbreaking book The Story Factor (2001) was named by 1-800-CEO-Read as one of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time (2009, Penguin). Her books have been translated into 11 languages. The second edition of her how-to book, Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins (2007) comes out in May 2015.

Annette lives back in her hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana with Lucy, an Italian greyhound of substance and style.

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Paul Smith • Speaker, trainer, and author

Paul is a popular keynote speaker, corporate trainer in leadership and storytelling techniques, and former executive and 20-year veteran of The Procter & Gamble Company. He is also the best-selling author of Lead with a Story: A Guide to Crafting Business Narratives That Captivate, Convince, and Inspire and Parenting with a Story: Real-life Lessons in Character for Parents and Children to Share.

As part of his research he has personally interviewed over 200 CEOs and executives in dozens of countries around the world. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Inc. magazine, Time, Forbes, The Washington Post, Success Magazine, and Investors Business Daily among others.

Paul holds a bachelors degree in economics, and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He lives with his wife and two sons in the Cincinnati suburb of Mason, Ohio.

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Graham Williams • Thought Provoker

Capetonian Graham Williams is the author of six books. The Virtuosa Organisation: The Importance of Virtues for a Successful Business is to be published by Knowledge Resources early 2015.

The rationale for The Halo and the Noose: The Power of Story Telling and Story Listening in Business Life is that stories can free us or trap us. Like the two-edged sword, they can open us to new possibilities or choke and strangle us in existing paradigms and orientations. Writer Dan McKinnon advises, “A halo has to fall only a few inches to be a noose.” The reverse is also true.

Graham's formal disciplines are psychology, economics, consumer behaviour, and business economics. He is a Certified Management Consultant and Executive Coach who brings loads of business experience and insight into the role and manner of using story to contribute to business life, and has worked in over 40 countries.

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