The Story Stichting is proud to make available our team of highly experienced story strategists who will help you communicate your message visually, orally, and in writing.
Our experts
Meet our story strategists
Lisa Lipkin - Spoken Word Strategist
Lisa Lipkin has been a professional storyteller for over thirty years writing and performing works internationally. What makes her work as a story strategist so unique is that it is informed by decades in the field as a storyteller, writer, and workshop leader.
Throughout the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, Ms. Lipkin’s work brought her to the most challenging neighborhoods in New York City. She created storytelling workshops in the South Bronx in mens’ homeless shelters and in after-school programs for children of sexual abuse. She listened to the poignant stories of battered women living in safe houses in Queens, and traveled to Welfare hotels in Brooklyn to help teens share their experiences. She helped Holocaust survivors and other refugees find the courage to share their dark secrets and trained them in how to tell their stories to others. It was during these early days in the field that she developed Indirect Story Prompts, an original strategy for extracting stories in a safe, non-threatening way. This technique would later become a core strategy in her work with businesses.
Ms. Lipkin now resides in Amsterdam, where she works as a story strategist with a wealth of non-profit and for profit organizations including Shell, Colgate Palmolive, Cisco, and the Technical University in Eindhoven, among others.
She is the author of Bringing the Story Home: The Complete Guide to Storytelling for Parents, and the editor of five books of American poetry.
Ariel Zeitlin Cooke - Librarian
Before becoming our media specialist and online librarian, Ariel Zeitlin Cooke had a colorful literary past She worked as a travel writer in Southeast Asia and the Middle East for Frommer’s Guides, Condé Nast Traveler, Art & Antiques, Elle Décor, and SmartMoney magazines. She was the associate producer of “A Little Vicious,” a documentary film that was nominated for an Oscar, served as the research editor for the (sadly) long-defunct Mirabella magazine, and was a line producer “Wow Wow Today,” a short weekly news series about New York City for a Japanese cable TV Station. In between her writing assignments, she curated “Weavings of War,” an exhibit of textiles depicting modern warfare from Asia, Latin America and South Africa that traveled to 12 venues across the U.S. She also co-edited the exhibition catalog, Weavings of War, Fabrics of Memory, a collection of artist profiles and scholarly essays.
Ariel currently works as a librarian at the Livingston Public Library, in Livingston, New Jersey, where she runs a highly successful “coffee and crime” book club. She is the author of the Unexpected Librarian (http://theunexpectedlibrarian.vpweb.com), where she reviews contemporary literature and blogs about her favorite passion, reading.
Stephanie Schoeder, Written Word Strategist
Stephanie Schroeder is a writer and activist based in Brooklyn, New York. She is a communications strategist and editorial consultant with a background in staff and freelance journalism and public relations. Her articles and stories have appeared in a wide range of publications including The Guardian, Chelsea Now, Passport Magazine, Brooklyn Papers, GO Magazine, About.com, Station-to-Station, Life of the Law, Fifty Is The New Fifty, Brick Underground, Lambda Literary Review, among others. She was a contributing editor at Curve Magazine for seven years, and was the featured creative non-fiction editor for Iris Brown Lit Magazine’s debut issue.
Schroeder graduated from Hunter College with a BA in communications and holds a JD from New York Law School. She likes to play with alternative story concepts and fresh ideas in written form. A creative thinker with a quirky personality and original ideas, Schroeder is a keen cultural observer whose appetite for odd juxtapositions and interesting contradictions informs all of her work. Her special interests lie in creativity, creative capital, and alternative economies. A sampling of her journalism can be found here: https://stephanieschroeder.contently.com. Schroeder is also the author of the memoir Beautiful Wreck: Sex, Lies, and Suicide.
Bob Bragar - NGO and Microfinance Strategist
Bob Bragar is a knowledge powerhouse in the field of microfinance, impact investing, and social business. He helps organizations develop strategies for growth that align their internal narratives with their external ones, to help them secure financing and reduce costly risks and legal exposure by telling the right story.
As an attorney and advisor, he has helped Oikocredit International (NL); MicroVest (USA); BlueOrchard Finance (CH), Russian Microfinance Center (RF), among others.
His Board memberships (current and former) include
Russian Microfinance Center, Moscow, The Maanaveya Development and Finance Private (India), where also member of Audit Committee / LE Foundation (Bhutan), and Oikocredit Nigeria.
He is on the Advisory Council on Governance at Acción International’s Center for Inclusive Finance (formerly at World Microfinance Forum Geneva), and is a member of the European Microfinance Platform and the
New York and Washington, DC bar associations.
He is also the founder of the webinar series www.LocalVoice4Development.org and a presenter of the television program Amsterdam Writers.
Jeroen Bruijn - Visual Designer + Strategist
Jeroen Bruijn is one of the Netherland’s most sought after graphic designers, known for his bold use of colors and his stunning originality. He studied at the Royal Arts and Crafts Academy in the Hague in the Netherlands before becoming the Senior Graphic Designer at Thonik, where he worked on visual identities and communication projects for the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, the Dutch Socialist Party, and Museumnacht Amsterdam, among many others. His work caught the attention of JongeMeesters in Amsterdam, a graphic design studio for brand strategy, concept, and product design, where he became design director in 2009. In 2013, he become the creative director at Fasten Beauty creators, a packaging and fragrance company, where he was responsible for all creative output and marketing matters. In addition to his generous work with Storystichting, Jeroen is the owner of Selfs (selfs.nl), a digital creative agency for communication.