I had the chance to spend today with the community at Achieving the Dream — first delivering the plenary session and then leading a hands-on workshop with faculty and staff from schools across the network. Getting to meet so many different people, hear about their work, and dig into critical challenges and opportunities facing the Humanities in the GenAI era made for one of those days that reminds me why I love this work.

The keynote centered on a theme I keep coming back to: as AI reshapes our institutions, humanity isn’t becoming less important — it’s becoming more critical to infrastructure and transformation than ever. The tools are moving fast, but the work of teaching, connecting, and making meaning is still deeply human. That’s the thread running through everything I build.

That idea set up the second half of the day perfectly: a hands-on workshop on the Story-to-Impact Matrix™ (an idea I’ve been playing with for a while). This matrix or framework really is something I’ve been developing for how educators and leaders can turn their work into stories that actually land … with an audience, with evidence, and with impact. It’s the newest piece of what I do, and one I’m excited to keep building out: helping people move from “I did a thing” to a story that others remember, believe, and act on.

The core idea we worked through together:

Story without evidence becomes anecdote. Evidence without story becomes statistics. Together, they become influence.

Storytelling isn’t just telling stories; it’s a method for helping people understand, remember, believe, and act. Digital tools just extend that, enhance that even; they don’t replace it.

Watching participants go from a blank page to a rough but working digital story prototype in under an hour was fun. I had them also leveraging GenAI as a thinking partner rather than a shortcut—discovering, what I hope, were some stories worth telling that they may have previously thought as not worth telling. 🙂

Grateful to Achieving the Dream for the invitation!