Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephanie Judd.
Hi Stephanie, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
My path has been circuitous but also not all that unexpected in hindsight. I graduated with a Computer Science degree. At school, I was good at it, but it didn’t take long for me to figure out that being an engineer and a developer wasn’t a great fit for me in the job market. Then began a long journey of soul searching that took me to several countries on three continents across four different industries (I worked in public health, energy, micro-finance, and in the nonprofit world). I finally went to grad school in Michigan in part because I needed a “comma” in my career to reflect and regroup. While there, I finally articulated that my favorite part of every project or experience I’d taken on until that point had been getting others inspired to care about it too.
After graduating with my MBA, I joined a consulting firm that specialized in inspiring employees to care about the organizational strategy. I had finally found work that was meaningful to me: I was helping leaders of organizations tell compelling and inspiring stories about their businesses to engage their employees. How cool is that!?
The decision to launch Wolf & Heron came later. My partner and I were ready to leave Michigan, and because of the way the cards fell, I wasn’t able to take my job with me. Around the same time, Kara, who had been a colleague of mine at the same firm and a friend from grad school, was going through her own transition to her place of belonging in upstate New York. We talked to each other as friends and as colleagues as we honed our resumes and began the arduous task of searching for jobs in our new locations. But neither of us could find anything inspiring.
Our grad program at Michigan hosted an alumni reunion in October of 2016, and they asked for volunteers to provide programming. Kara and I were both unemployed and tired of the job hunt, so we welcomed the distraction and decided to offer up a workshop about how to tell an inspiring story. We knew the content like the backs of our hands because storytelling was foundational to the consulting work we had done. Plus, we had years of facilitation experience and knowledge of behavior change that we’d picked up in grad school to add to our point of view!
We had 25 attendees join us for our first delivery of Influential Storytelling, and out of that single event, we landed several leads to deliver that workshop within private organizations. By December of that same year, we decided to go into business together, and we launched Wolf & Heron in January 2017. Our job search was officially over, and today our Influential Storytelling program is the bread and butter of our business. We’ve delivered it to 1000s of participants and honed it into an interactive learning experience we’re both extremely proud of.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Prior to the COVID pandemic, we were a professional development firm that delivered in-person learning experiences to large groups gathering together. You can imagine what March 2020 felt like when every one of the deliveries we had booked were canceled or postponed indefinitely. In the matter of a few weeks, our entire pipeline dried up. It was as if we had become obsolete within a matter of days.
We had to pivot.
We quickly stood up a virtual offering of our Influential Storytelling workshop that demonstrated our continued commitment to delivering highly interactive, engaging learning experiences. In this way, we were able to hold onto a few existing clients, but we were pleased to discover that a virtual offering in our portfolio opened us up to conversations with some of the bigger global organizations that were already well down the path of offering virtual learning to their employees. Also, to help out the folks who were feeling disenfranchised, overwhelmed, and disconnected from the world, we expanded our services to include one-on-one executive coaching. These services were eventually picked up in bulk by organizations trying to hold onto their employees through the mess. Before we could say “COVID-19,” our business had become more diversified and stable.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Wolf & Heron is a leadership development firm that leverages expertise in social psychology, influence, and facilitation to develop leaders who can effectively engage and inspire others.
We offer customized, people-focused programs, such as corporate training, public workshops, and executive coaching. Our clients transcend organizational profiles; we work with Fortune 100 companies to startups, small non-profits to large educational institutions.
Our bread and butter is our Influential Storytelling program, which empowers professionals to use stories as a way to engage and inspire others. Over the years, we have developed a strong point of view on what makes a story influential and effective ways to craft and refine stories for that purpose. We love sharing this point of view with the world and helping leaders better motivate their teams.
One of the key things that makes W&H successful is the solid business partnership I have with Kara Davidson. She’s been my rock through all the ups and downs. We complement each other well, and every day that we have another conversation where she checks me and I check her, I am grateful for the friendship, partnership, and support that she offers. Not only does she make the business better, she makes me better as a human.
Recently we had our annual business retreat and we had a long conversation about how much “hustle” is the right amount to devote to our business. We’re both ready to do what it takes to build a business that succeeds, but we also want to make sure that the business we build supports the life we want and not the other way around. If our business doesn’t afford us the time to be with our families, travel, and do other things in life that give us meaning, then we’re building the wrong business. A few weeks after our retreat, I sent Kara a text lamenting a day of non-productivity (and therefore non-hustle). In classic Kara fashion, she turned that text into a small coaching moment. Did I want to feel shame for being non-productive? Did I want to commiserate? Or was I texting her in the hopes that she might help me find productivity tomorrow? These small interactions are what make Kara, and our relationship in general, so powerful.
Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
A fun way to collaborate and support our brand is through our public events. We offer many free virtual events to anyone who’s interested in learning more about how to engage and inspire others, particularly through the craft of storytelling. We periodically offer the first module of our Influential Storytelling program to the public, provide micro workshop opportunities, and host roundtable conversations.
We also offer Story Hour on the first Friday of every month. Story Hour is a casual environment where participants share stories and the rest of us, including Wolf & Heron story coaches, offer experiments to try that may make the stories more influential. Story Hour is completely free, so they’re a great way to get to know us and our point of view, find community with other storytellers, and practice telling a story or two of your own.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.wolfandheron.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wolfandheron_leadership/
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/wolfandheron
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wolfandheron/
