About Me
Storytelling with Impact explores the art of storytelling from the perspective that the stories we tell can impact the lives of others, and in doing so, impact society as a whole. We’ve been experiencing a storytelling renaissance in response to, and supported by, digital media.
Live talks, as well as recorded videos and podcasts, are delivering a continuous stream of personal narratives to our devices. So if you want your story to stand out, to resonate, and to matter to your listeners, your narrative will need to be crafted in a way that imparts deep meaning, then delivered with conviction.
Mark Lovett
From a young age I was drawn to the power and richness of storytelling. From old radio dramas such as The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Shadow, The Green Hornet, or Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, to hardboiled novels penned by Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler, as well as cold war spy stories by John le Carré, Graham Greene, and Robert Ludlum.
After many years in the corporate world, telling business-based stories, it was time for a change.
The TEDx Years
I attended my first TEDx event, TEDxSanDiego in 2010. In 2012 I was invited to speak at TEDxNewBedford. In 2013 I was asked to co-organize TEDxSanDiego, and in 2014 I became the organizer and produced TEDx events through 2019.
In addition to the main events held in symphony hall I had the opportunity to work on a few very special events. In 2013 the organizers of TEDxSanDiego and TEDxTijuana met to discuss the concept of creating an event that would span the U.S. / Mexico border. It took two and a half years of planning, but on September 4, 2015 TEDxMonumento258 became the world’s first bi-national TEDx event with one stage built in Mexico, another stage in the United States, and the border fence in between, with speakers alternating between the two.
In 2017 I was invited to co-organize TEDxDonovanCorrectional – a TEDx event in prison in which half the speakers were from the outside, and half were inmates. The audience was similarly split, half inmates and half outsiders, with everyone sitting together during the talks, then eating lunch together afterwards in the prison culinary, followed by a free flowing group interaction session.
The last event that I organized occurred in 2019, and I wanted the voices of tomorrow’s leaders to be heard. TEDxYouth@SanDiego featured 13 speakers and 3 performances, all of whom were San Diego area high school students.
While producing TEDx events has been a defining factor during my storytelling journey, the learning process has extended to visiting other TED / TEDx events. To date I’ve attended 90+ amazing events in cities such as Los Angeles, Denver, New York, London and Berlin, and had the pleasure of seeing 1,500+ speakers take the stage with their ideas worth spreading.
Storytelling With Impact
The advent of digital technology, from podcasts to blogs to video sites, altered storytelling opportunities in a most profound way. That’s not to say it replaced human connection. Quite the opposite, as it’s augmented live narrative events (The Moth, The Narrators) and conferences (TED/TEDx, PopTech) where ideas and wisdom are shared in person.
My speaker coaching, storytelling workshops, and the classes I taught at UCSD Extension are based on the principals of storytelling with impact, where each speaker is taken through the process of uncovering their message (ideation), developing a powerful narrative (narration), then delivering their story up on stage (presentation).
Contact me to discuss your storytelling goals and objectives!