Staff Gallery
Joe Lambert, Founder and Co-Executive Director
Born and raised in Texas, Joe has been active in the Bay Area arts community for the last 25 years as an arts activist, producer, administrator, teacher, writer, and director. In 1986, he co-founded Life On The Water, a successful nonprofit production company that served San Francisco's diverse communities. Almost ten years later, with then-wife Nina Mullen and colleague Dana Atchley, Joe founded StoryCenter (formerly the Center for Digital Storytelling). Joe has produced over 500 shows, ranging from theatrical runs and single performances, to citywide festivals and digital story screenings. Prior to his career in the arts, he was trained as a community organizer and assisted in numerous local, statewide, and national public policy campaigns on issues of social justice and economic equity. BA, Theater and Political Science, University of California at Berkeley.
Walt Jacobs, Co-Executive Director
Walt has been a StoryCenter supporter since May 2008, when he was a member of a public introductory digital storytelling workshop. He also completed Snapshot Story and Facilitator in Training workshops. Walt used StoryCenter processes in co-teaching two semester-long digital storytelling classes in 2008 and 2011 at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities when he was the Chair of the Department of African American & African Studies, and co-led two public digital storytelling workshops in 2014 for veterans and their families when he was the Dean of the College of Social Sciences & Professional Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.
Walt has been on the StoryCenter Board of Directors since November 2015, when he was the Dean of the College of Social Sciences at San José State University. More recently, Walt was the Provost & Vice President of Academic Affairs at California State University East Bay in 2022 and 2023; he is currently a Professor of Ethnic Studies.
Walt has authored a book on undergraduate media literacy, co-edited an anthology on educational environments, co-edited an anthology on personal experiences of race and racism in Minnesota, and co-wrote an article about digital storytelling in college classrooms. He is an “open-door storyteller.”
Emily Paulos, Managing Director
Emily, a trained visual artist and educator, is the youngest of eight children born and raised in Iowa. She developed The Mom Project, a web site that examines issues of family narrative and the use of technology in the art classroom. In addition to leading technology classes for public school K-12 art educators, Emily taught art in Iowa public schools, specializing in web design, video production, and photography. Before joining our staff full-time in 2002, she volunteered at a community center in Japan, teaching art and storytelling to women and children. BFA, Painting and Printmaking; K-12 Art Teaching Certification; MA, Art Education, University of Iowa.
Amy Hill, Program Director
Amy is a fourth generation Californian, with deep roots in Sonoma County. After spending 12 years coordinating women’s health and violence prevention projects for the California Department of Health Services, Amy discovered digital storytelling and launched our Silence Speaks initiative, which since 2000 has used oral history, participatory media, and popular education strategies to support people in countries around the world in sharing personal stories of gender, health, and human rights. She has authored several journal articles and books chapters about this work. Amy lives in Berkeley, where she continues to lead Silence Speaks and oversees much of StoryCenter’s communication work. BA, British and American Literature, Scripps College; MA, Gender Studies, Stanford University.
Daniel Weinshenker, Program Director
Daniel has been telling his stories and helping others to find and tell their own for more than 20 years. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, he taught creative writing during his post-graduate writing work at the University of Colorado. In 2000, he took a workshop with Joe Lambert, caught the bug, joined our staff, and established an office in Denver. Daniel specializes in exploring the impacts the stories we tell about ourselves have on our identity. He developed and currently manages our Nurstory initiative, and has also done considerable work with museums and radio/television broadcasters in the Denver area. He is a recipient of Colorado Public Television's Independent Media Award. BA, English and Creative Writing, University of California, San Diego; MA, Creative Writing, University of Colorado, Boulder; MSW, Metro State University.
Andrea Spagat, Program Director
Andrea was raised by her bilingual/bicultural family in both Argentina and the United States. Before coming on board as a staff member in 2006, she worked for 12 years as an educator in a variety of settings, including a jail GED project in Wisconsin, a training program for rural school teachers in Bolivia, and a substance abuse prevention initiative for youth in San Francisco. Andrea’s work at StoryCenter is varied– she focuses on public health projects that have included stories with HIV-impacted communities and workshops in behavioral health settings. In addition, she leads bilingual (English-Spanish) workshops. BA, International Relations and Spanish, University of California, Davis; MS, Adult Education, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Robert Kershaw, Director of Public Workshops
Rob is a photographer, designer, and writer who began working on story and photography projects with remote communities in Canada’s Northwest Territories in 2001. He is the author, co-editor, and co-designer of four books about the history and ecology of various areas in northern Canada. Before joining our staff in 2007, Rob spent time publishing a small-town newspaper and working on an oilrig. BS, Ecology and Communication Studies, University of Calgary.
Ryan Trauman, Director of Podcasting
Trauman has been making stories for 25 years: first as a poet in Fargo and Boulder, then as a digital storyteller in Louisville and Chicago, and now as a podcaster in Denver. He earned his M.A. in Creative Writing, was a full-time potter for three years, fell just short of a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition, and taught first-year college writing for 20 years. He co-hosted the Masters of Text podcast until 2018 and now co-hosts the Fools In Wonderland podcast. Trauman has taught at the University of Colorado, the University of Louisville, Columbia College Chicago, and the Digital Media and Composition Institute at The Ohio State University. He’s been facilitating workshops for StoryCenter since 2008, and he’s been the Director of Podcasting since 2021. BA in English Literature, North Dakota State University; MA in Creative Writing, University of Colorado, Boulder.
Rani Sanderson, Director, StoryCentre Canada
Rani worked for more than 15 years as a film programmer, video artist, and VJ in many cities, countries, islands, clubs, and festivals around the world, before pursuing a second education in environmental studies, with a concentration on community arts, environmental education, and social justice. It was during this time, in 2008, that she was first introduced to StoryCenter, and she has been facilitating digital storytelling workshops ever since. BA, Film, Ryerson University; MS, Environmental Studies, York University. For Canadian inquiries, email rani @ storycentre.org
April Bell, Media Artist
April is a community health researcher, social epidemiologist, and health equity advocate whose work has focused on a range of public health issues, including bioterrorism, HIV, food borne diseases, maternal and child health, adolescent health, and sexual and reproductive health in the U.S., Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Malawi. A Hoosier by birth and the youngest in a family of avid storytellers, she understood the power of story at an early age. April uses digital storytelling in her research, to center and prioritize storytellers’ voices and experiences and harness the power of story to transform behavior and address disparities. BA, Human Biology, Stanford University; MPH, Epidemiology and Social and Behavioral Health, Indiana University; PhD, Epidemiology, Indiana University.
Brooke Hessler, Media Artist
Brooke has been a tenured professor, a corporate ghostwriter, and a short-order poet. She specializes in helping educators connect the dots between digital storytelling, critical reflection, and Universal Design for Learning. A faculty development specialist and award-winning teacher of community-engaged writing, Brooke has mentored hundreds of students as story-workers and oral history activists. She currently teaches writing at California College of the Arts and supports intergenerational storytellers through 826 Valencia/Pixar Story Xperiential in San Francisco and Littleglobe in Santa Fe, New Mexico. BA in English from the University of Texas at Arlington; MA in English and PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from Texas Christian University.
Denise Gantt, Media Artist
Born in a tight knit, entirely African American community in Philadelphia but raised in a majority white suburb of Harford County, Maryland, Denise has always been interested in what falls betwixt and between. She is a gardener, writer, theater artist, occasional singer, teacher, and arts administrator with a 30-year career in the nonprofit sector. Since the 90s, when she wrote her first autobiographical play about the joys and struggles of single motherhood, her work has been guided by the belief that personal storytelling can create meaningful catharsis between storytellers and their witnesses. Denise is currently an adjunct professor at Coppin State University and a member of the Baltimore Arts Education Initiative, a community-based program designed to increase arts education opportunities for youth. BA, Political Science/Urban Affairs, Goucher College; MFA, Theater, Towson University.
Holly McClelland, Media Artist
Holly is a graphic designer, filmmaker, editor, and expert rock skipper living in Denver. Since joining us as a facilitator in 2012, she survived cancer– all the while keeping her sense of humor. Holly played a big role in our storytelling project with the Positive Women’s Network in Colorado, holding space for women living with HIV. She is a Denver native and enjoys spending time in the woods on skis, listening to the sounds of the forest. BFA, Graphic Design and Painting, Colorado State University.
Lisa Nelson-Haynes, Media Artist
Lisa is the Executive Director of Philadelphia Young Playwrights (PYP), where she helps young people discover their potential through the art of the play. An award-winning storyteller and teacher, Lisa has facilitated digital storytelling workshops for us for more than 10 years, primarily on the East Coast of the U.S. She’s also a Leeway Foundation Art & Change grant recipient for the Redline Project. BA, Mass Media Arts, Hampton University.