Our Team

  • 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.”

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

Board of Directors

  • Nina Shapiro-Perl

    Documentary Filmmaker

    Nina has been working as a filmmaker, anthropologist, and teacher for 35 years. Between 2008 and 2017, she served as Filmmaker in Residence at American University, teaching documentary film and digital storytelling and founding the Community Voice Project, which produced 80+ films for 25 non-profit organizations in the greater Washington D.C. area. Before that, Nina worked for 20 years for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), where she created films and programs for and by workers. In 2006, she wrote, produced, and directed the film Through the Eye of the Needle, which tells the story of Holocaust survivor and artist Esther Nisenthal Krinitz. Nina’s latest film, Landscape of Power: Freedom and Slavery in the Great Dismal Swamp, tells a story of agency, resistance, and resilience among escaped slaves living in swamp communities for more than 200 years. After living on the East Coast all her life, Nina moved to the Bay Area in 2018, to be near her children and grandchildren and continue her film and digital storytelling work.

  • Nikki Yeboah

    Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, San Jose State University

    Nikki is a teacher, writer, performer, and researcher focused on the relationship between performance and racial and transnational identity within African diasporan communities. In the classroom and in the field, Nikki uses performance to facilitate dialogue around issues of identity, social justice, and interpersonal and intercultural dynamics. Nikki is also a solo performance artist whose work interrogates issues of race, gender, and migration through storytelling. Her work has been staged at the Marsh Theater (San Francisco), Links Hall (Chicago), and the Chicago Cultural Center. She believes that through storytelling, we uncover strategies for critically examining and transforming ourselves and our communities. Nikki holds a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University, and is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington.

  • Jane Van Galen

    Professor Emeritus of Education, University of Washington Bothell

    Jane’s teaching and research focus on social class and social mobility through education. Recently, she has focused on ways in which new forms of participatory digital media enable the inclusion of more voices in deliberations about civic and cultural life. She developed a graduate certificate in Critical Digital Teaching and Learning (which includes coursework in digital storytelling), and in 2018 was recipient of the tri-campus Distinguished Teaching Award for Innovation with Technology. Jane is a co-editor of four books on class, mobility, and education, as well as the creator (with the nonprofit Class Action) and facilitator of the First in our Families project, in which first-generation college students, faculty, and staff create and share digital stories of being First. Her chapter on this project, Mediating Stories of Class Borders: First Generation College Students, Digital Storytelling, and Social Class, appears in the Routledge International Handbook of Working Class Studies. BA from University of Wisconsin Green Bay in Educational Studies; M.Ed. from Eastern Kentucky University in Special Education; Ph.D. from University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in Foundations of Education.

  • Janet Ferguson

    Independent Educator and Consultant

    Janet’s time as the Executive Director of the Lifelong Learning Centre (LLC) at Bermuda College led to her current working partnerships with the National Museum of Bermuda, the Educational Travel Graduate Consortium, the Graduate Advisory Council of University College Cayman Islands, the Grow Society, and the Bermuda Environmental Sustainability Taskforce. Janet is also a visiting adjunct professor at the Teacher’s College, Columbia University AEGIS doctoral program, where she uses Boal’s theatre of the oppressed “image theatre” to explore models and theories of racial identity. She continues to teach, undertake research, and co-supervise graduate students across multiple disciplines. B.A General Studies, University of the West Indies (St. Augustine); M.A Area Studies (Commonwealth) University of London; M.Sc. Marketing, University of Strathclyde; Diploma in Teaching, Learning & Course Design in Higher Education, Institute of Education, University of London; Ph. D Continuing Education, University of Warwick.

  • Maritza de la Trinidad

    Associate Professor, Department of History and Mexican American Studies, University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley

    Maritza’s research and publications focus on Mexican American education in the Southwest, including bilingual education, desegregation cases, policies, practices, and programs aimed at Mexican American students, and educational and civil rights activism. She is the Project Director of Historias Americanas: Engaging History and Citizenship in the Rio Grande Valley, a professional development program for local K-12 history and Social Studies teachers that is funded by a U.S. Department of Education American History and Civics Education grant. Maritza enjoys teaching history, spending time with friends and family, wogging (walking/jogging), playing the piano, and cultural events. She holds a MA in Latin Studies from San Diego State University, and a MA and PhD in History from the University of Arizona.