About
At Stories Change Power, we provide training, coaching, and learning opportunities for people who want to build their civic muscle. If you want to make a difference in your neighborhood, communities, and country, we're here to equip you with the tools, strategy, and network to be an effective, empathetic, and trusted advocate.
Our Approach
At the heart of our work is a simple but powerful belief: lasting change starts with people - and their stories.
Our approach blends experience, research, and data to build strategies that reflect the realities of the people most affected by a problem and reach those in positions to implement a solution.
We're here to build your capacity and support your mission. Whether you’re looking to sharpen your advocacy storytelling skills, develop your leadership, or equip your team or grassroots advocates to be effective changemakers, we offer practical training, customized coaching, and meaningful learning opportunities.
We'll help you navigate the present moment while shaping our shared future. At every step, we emphasize dignity, respect across difference, and leadership that embraces both power and humility.
Our goal is simple: support your heart and mind as you reach the hearts and minds of others, including those in positions of power, to shape a world where everyone can thrive - no exceptions.
Why We Do It
We all deserve a world that works for everyone - no exceptions. To make that world a reality, we need fair laws, policies, and systems at every level in our neighborhoods, communities, and country-wide.
Only through effective advocacy will good ideas and smart research become good laws and smart policies. (Not by sitting in PDF files no one reads.)
Effective advocacy requires strategy, data, empathy, trust, resilience - and compelling narratives from passionate advocates to inspire action and drive lasting change.
We ensure people and organizations with whom we work are seen and valued and that the people they serve feel seen and valued.
That's why we created Stories Change Power.
Meet the Board
Piper Hendricks
CEO
Our organization is led by Piper Hendricks, a former human rights litigator, documentary filmmaker, and recognized advocacy expert.
After growing up in a small town in Texas, Piper’s work has taken her around the world, including Central and South America, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Middle East. She sees and deeply appreciates our interconnectedness and how much we can learn from each other globally.
Piper has a passion for the power of story, a record of developing innovative strategy, and an eye for content that moves people to action. Two themes span her nontraditional career path: justice and storytelling. In a variety of formats, she's employed storytelling to inspire action; whether in the courtroom, on the silver screen, or on Capitol Hill, she champions change to promote opportunity for all.
She created Stories Change Power to help individuals and organizations claim their power, share their stories, and change the world.
Piper earned her Bachelors degree cum laude from Vanderbilt University before earning her J.D. cum laude from the University of Michigan. After interning at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Piper joined the firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver, and Jacobson LLP as a litigation associate. She went on to a federal clerkship before joining the human rights legal organizations that preceded her filmmaking and advocacy work.
Sheila Maloney
Director, Intercultural Learning Labs
Sheila Maloney has spent her 20+ year legal and teaching career as a mediator and professor of mediation and conflict resolution skills. She is an expert with highly charged situations that require deeper reflection and practical results.
The Intercultural Learning Lab is personal for Sheila as both a Brazilian and an American. Sheila is bilingual, bicultural and cares deeply about both countries. Sheila’s family left Brazil in the late 1970’s when Sheila was a young child because of the dictatorship and the uncertainty it presented.
As a lawyer, mediator, and bridge builder, Sheila has spent her career helping people find common ground. Now, she wants to help build this bridge—between nations, communities, and generations—so that Brazilians and Americans can imagine and co-create a democratic future together.
Sheila received her B.A from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She began her public service career in the Americorps Program, Teach for America. Sheila later earned her J.D. from Northwestern University, Pritzker School of Law, and she began her legal career at Troutman Pepper Locke LLP before returning to Northwestern Law as a Clinical Professor of Dispute Resolution.
Our Core Values
Radical (răd′ĭ-kəl) adjective
1. Different from the usual;
2. Designed to address the root of a problem;
3. Relating to or advocating fundamental changes in current practices, conditions, or institutions.
Stories Change Power aims to live our values in all that we do.
Inspired by work around Radical Candor and Radical Acceptance, we use the term "radical" to mean an approach that is courageous and goes beyond current norms with hope to help transform those norms.
Our Framework
The Nine Rights
Being passionate about an issue isn't enough to create lasting change. Successful advocacy requires strategy. The Nine Rights Framework is a proven approach to developing an effective, empathetic, and trusted advocacy strategy. This strategy informs all that we do, and is covered in depth in our Learning Communities.
