Our Faculty
We designed this training according to both what we wish we knew when we were starting out and informed by best practices for finding your calling and developing the work you love.
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We bring to you our decades of experience as writers and performers, facilitators and consultants, working widely with organizations and businesses as well as fellow travelers listening to the pulse of our own right livelihoods.
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Our guest teachers -- Gregg Levoy, Ada Chang, Marianela Medrano, Huascar Medina, and Heather Forest -- illuminate how to craft a livelihood, sustain a practice, and serve others.
Laura Packer
Laura Packer has been performing, coaching, writing, consulting, and leading the storytelling field for 25 years. She knows the best way to the truth is through a good story, and that this universally accessible artform creates empathy, builds bridges, and has the power to both heal and change the world. The winner of multiple awards for performance and leadership, Laura is the author of From Audience to Zeal: The ABCs of Finding, Crafting and Telling a Great Story. When she isn’t performing, Laura is the sole proprietor of ThinkStory, LLC, one of the nation’s foremost organizational consulting firms.
Laura’s storytelling work is focused on helping everyone live a full life, with a full range of experiences, including building and growing healthy relationships, radical forgiveness, environmental advocacy, listening, demystifying and destigmatizing grief and other powerful feelings, and trying to live as authentic and engaged a life as possible. You can learn more about her storytelling and coaching work at laurapacker.com, and her organizational work at thinkstory.com
Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg
Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., Kansas Poet Laureate Emerita, is the founder of Transformative Language Arts, and a creativity consultant, coach, and workshop facilitator. She is the author of two dozen books, including How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; Miriam's Well, a novel; Needle in the Bone, a non-fiction book on the Holocaust; The Sky Begins At Your Feet, a bioregional memoir on cancer and community; and the award-winning Chasing Weather. With singer Kelley Hunt, she co-leads Brave Voice writing and singing retreats.
Caryn has extensive experience founding, coordinating, and serving on the boards of arts and ecological/bioregional not-for-profits, and her expertise includes program development, organizational development, grant-writing, fundraising, marketing, and especially facilitation. Born hard-wired to make something (in art, music, and especially writing), Caryn’s long-time callings include writing as a spiritual and ecological path, yoga, cultivating a loving marriage, family, and community, and helping herself and others make and take leaps into the miraculous work of their lives. www.CarynMirriamGoldberg.com
Guest Teachers
Dr. Ada Cheng is a professor-turned-storyteller, solo performer, and storytelling show producer. She has been featured in storytelling shows and done her two solo performances all over the country. She is the producer and the host of four storytelling shows, including Pour One Out, Am I Man Enough?, Talk Stories: An Asian American/Asian Diaspora Storytelling Show, and Speaking Truths Series. She creates platforms for people to tell difficult and vulnerable stories as well as spaces for people and communities who may not have opportunities otherwise. She works as an Education and Outreach Specialist for Women's Leadership and Resource Center at UIC. Her interests span multiple fields, including academia, storytelling/performance art, and advocacy. Her motto: Make your life the best story you tell.
Gregg Levoy, author of Callings: Finding and Following An Authentic Life (Random House) and Vital Signs: Discovering and Sustaining Your Passion for Life (Penguin), the former “behavioral specialist” at USA Today, and a current blogger for Psychology Today. He has presented at the Smithsonian Institution, Environmental Protection Agency, International Conference on Positive Aging, Microsoft, American Counseling Association, National Career Development Association, and many others, and has appeared on ABC-TV, CNN, NPR and PBS. A former adjunct professor of journalism at the University of New Mexico, former columnist and reporter for many publications, including New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, and Fast Company.
Heather Forest is a modern-day bard. Her storytelling performances are a fusion of poetry, prose, original melody, and the sung and spoken word. A pioneer in the American storytelling revival she has shared her repertoire of world tales in theatres, schools, literature conferences, and storytelling festivals throughout the United States and abroad. A multiple award-winning author and recording artist, she has published seven children's picture books based on folktales, three folktale anthologies, eight audio recordings of storytelling and a popular educational web site StoryArts Online here. Ms. Forest is a recipient of the Circle of Excellence Award presented by the National Storytelling Network, U.S.A.
Stan Herd began as a painter and muralist before attaining the position as the pre-eminent representational earthworks artist in the world today. One of the founders of the "Prairie Renaissance" Herd has been active in a group promoting film, music and the arts in America’s heartland. Herd’s artworks have spanned 40 years and include works with major companies in commercial endeavors alongside his monumental fine art earthworks in China, Cuba, Australia, Brazil and throughout the US. His activism and community involvement has helped define this new art form while embracing his love of the Land and the first Native Peoples of the Americas whose embrace of nature defined their culture. As a progressive activist Herd has embraced this community driven art form to bring attention to a multitude of issues showcasing the environment, science, sustainable agriculture and the humanities which all connect on a common theme regarding the ‘human condition’ in the world today. See more of his art here, and the film about one of his projects here. Check out some of his field art here.
Marianela Medrano is a Dominican writer, poet and a psychotherapist with a Ph.D in psychology whose practice include Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Mindfulness, and Integral Psychotherapy. The author of numerous poetry books, Medrano's poetry has been widely published and translated. She is a certified poetry therapist and serves as a mentor/supervisor for the International Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy. She also is in the incoming president of the National Association for Poetry Therapy.