From the time she was small, reading two books at once on the way to school, Mary Alice Arthur loved stories, but it took her more than 30 years to uncover their real power. At a storytelling festival in New Zealand in 1992, she had an “a-ha!” experience and from then on she devoured every story she could find, while waiting for the moment when her profession as a facilitator would meet her love of stories.

She performed as a storyteller and worked as a consultant. Eventually the field of organisational storytelling began and now story is the new black. But now there is the danger of perceiving it as tool instead of what makes us intrinsically human. As a Story Activist, Arthur works with story in service of positive systemic shift and for focusing collective intelligence on critical issues. Her aim is to create spaces where a new story can take people into a generative future.