Greetings! I'm Jess.

And as a storyteller, educator, futurist, and wilderness guide who has devoted her career to helping people distill and articulate their unique perspectives in ways that move people to action, there is one thing I know for sure:

You have a unique perspective, and it's probably one that more people need to know about, get behind, and tell their friends about. 

The problem lies in precisely how to articulate that perspective, in such a way as to engage, inspire and influence (ethically, of course!) the key people you need to rally around (and help to co-create) whatever the future is that you envision. 

Whether that future relates to your organization, your startup, your business idea, your career, your well-researched expertise, or society more broadly, this is where I thrive and would love to be your ally:

Helping you tap into and leverage the neural process that determines how humans communicate, remember, decide, and make sense of our lives -- aka story.

As the original OS (operating system) of the human brain, story is the engine that quietly drives our mental models, often without our conscious awareness or intent.

This means that the choice pertaining to story is not of whether but of how.

And that a little attention in this realm can change not only your current reality, but also what types of future realities appear to you as possible, probable, or likely.

It also means that you already have everything you need to get started.

And that no matter how sophisticated your audience appears to you -- as long as they have a human brain, they are vulnerable to the power of story. 

Like many life-changing insights, this is not something I learned in school.

Rather, I stumbled into story 15 years ago -- both by accident, and by necessity. 

The simple fact is that for much of my life, the things I wanted to do with my limited time on Earth tended to be things that made other people nervous — because they entailed risk, and didn’t follow an obvious linear path toward “success.” 

(There are many stories here -- if we ever meet IRL, I might be persuaded to tell you one or two.) 

And around each of these choices, concerned parties would gather with varying degrees of admiration and fear to ask: Why?

(Which, by the way, is the golden question that undergirds every storytelling opportunity.) 

And instead of explaining my reasons, I would tell them a story.

A story that illustrated one of those clarifying moments that inspired me to take stock; to ask the question; to do the research; to take the risk.

That revealed the nature and depth of my motivations, which until then had been opaque to them.

That reminded them of their own quest for meaning and truth, and the buried parts of themselves that they had forgotten.

And every time, I would watch them complete a 180-degree transformation.

From skeptic to cheerleader, in 5-7 minutes flat.

I've personally experienced this phenomenon more times than I can count, and I've also watched hundreds of clients experience it for themselves: 

How changing the way you communicate can change everything about your current situation, and your field of possibility. 

Because story is the bridge between idea and reality.

Before you have a thing, you have an idea of what the thing could be.

The idea inspires you to paint a picture, using words, to show others what you are talking about and (crucially) why they should care.

If the transfer of meaning is successful, those people (and their resources) become activated in a shared quest to make the thing real.

I can’t stress enough: That’s how ideas become real.

Once you start speaking the language of story into your sphere of influence, the process of midwifing ideas into reality will begin to accelerate.

Many things — related to gatekeepers, skeptics, withholders, and would-be villains — will become “magically” easier.

You will find you can easily reframe people’s assumptions without making them defensive; challenge the status quo without coming off as an antagonist; and invite those around you to reconsider the central questions of who we are, what we are here to do, and why.

In ways that build deeper relationships, richer communities, and a stronger sense of collective purpose.

And — while AI is useful in many ways, these are things it simply cannot replicate.

Because all storytelling seeks to transfer the wisdom that is earned through human experience; and AI does not have experience.

AI has never had to move through the world in a vulnerable human body, trying to make sense of heartbreak or failure or transcendence or mortality. 

This void of experience is evident in its language and its way of “thinking.” You can see it in how it's always defining things in binaries ("it's not this, it's that") and constantly trying to close the loop of meaning in the space of a single prompt — which is not how life works.

Humans know that life is paradoxical, that many things can be true at once, and that our grand meaning-making experiment is ongoing, co-created, and open-ended. 

At the end of the day, humans will always look to other humans for leadership they can trust.

Only humans can offer an authentic point of view — wisdom, derived from experience — in order to advance the human quest for a brighter future.

If you dream of such a future, I can't wait to hear about it.