Elsa Zuniga collects stories the way most people collect lint - in strange and unexpected places, often without even realizing it. This magnetic pull toward storytelling has shaped both her personal growth and narrative voice. It has also shaped her professional path as both a program manager in the tech industry and a professional coach, where storytelling enriches everything from guiding complex technical initiatives to supporting individuals in their growth journeys.

After two decades of being inspired by and transformed through Northeast Storytelling, Elsa is excited to serve as its president. She looks forward to combining her professional expertise with her deep love of storytelling to help the organization thrive - preserving the magic that has touched so many while building sustainable foundations that will allow more people to discover the transformative power of stories.

Every morning, in the early 1990s, Christie drank her coffee and read two flyers: one offering Jay O’Callahan’s “Workshop on the Marsh” and another her GMAT exam appointment letter – both of which were scheduled for the same day. Luckily, three days before either, her intuition kicked in, there was one spot left in Jay’s workshop, and graduate school was in the rearview mirror.

In the three and a half decades since then, while performing, Christie has told personal stories at festivals, coffee houses, schools, churches, Tellabration, fundraisers, hospitals, nursing homes and house parties. She founded a monthly open mic in Saratoga that ran for five years and recently retired as co-host of a monthly storytelling program at Caffe Lena after 16 years. She also chaired the Sharing the Fire conference through its transition from a Boston based to regional conference; moving the venue from MIT to New Hampshire for three years and then to Rhode Island. She left that position after five years.  Laughter through tears is a common emotion for her audience as she dances with topics such as love, recovery from grieving, bullying, animals of all sorts, interesting life choices and the occasional epic failure.

Her real love lies in using narrative when working with victims of domestic violence and sexual assault – helping them tell their story, often for the first time, and supporting them in crafting their own new story for the next chapter of their lives. For twenty five years her coaching skills were put to use as she walked a fine line between advocate, counselor, and coach. She asserts that the people she worked with taught her more than she taught them and she carries their stories forward to support others.  She has also used narrative to educate the public as well as Middle and High School students, police officers, district attorneys, their staff, and court personnel because stories do a much better job than any Powerpoint presentation!

Christie is excited to serve on the current STF Board and looks forward to supporting the organization as it advances storytelling in various ways in our rapidly changing world. She looks forward to seeing storytelling expand beyond the boundaries of performance to inform practices throughout a wide range of disciplines.

Konrad is a very serious board member who weaves story telling into his daily work as Vice President at Oracle. His journey into story telling started in 2014 when Laura Packer had taught classes and since then storytelling has been making a difference in both his personal growth and success at work. He brings in focus on execution and making Northeast Storytelling continue be successful in its mission to provide education, advocacy and further opportunities for storytellers.

Karl Schatz is the co-founder and Executive Director of Community Plate. He is an award-winning journalist and storyteller, who has worked at ABC Television, Time Magazine, Reuters and the Associated Press. Together with his wife and Community Plate co-founder, Margaret Hathaway, he has published seven books on food, farming, and community, including two volumes of the award-winning Maine Community Cookbooks. These books, plus 20 years developing a philosophy and practice around hospitality and community building, provided the inspiration and foundation for the creation of Story Sharing Potluck Suppers. Karl’s work with Community Plate has been featured on The TODAY Show, NBC Nightly News, NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, and in print in The National Civic Review, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, The Maine Sunday Telegram, and The Chronicle of Philanthropy. In April 2025 he was named one of 25 innovators tackling the loneliness epidemic in 2025 by Reimagine’s Making Connections web series.

Alison Shea has spent more than two decades helping organizations grow, solve complicated problems, and make change work in the real world. She is a former Vice President of Enterprise Transformation & Strategy at State Street Corporation, with senior leadership experience at FINRA, Thomson Reuters, State Street Global Advisors, and Andela.

Her work has crossed sales enablement, regulatory education, technology adoption and safe oversight, workforce capability, operating model design, organizational performance, and enterprise transformation. In each of those settings, storytelling was not separate from the work. It was critical to successfully getting the work done.

At Thomson Reuters, Alison helped grow a strategic services business by translating complex products and client needs into solutions people could understand, buy, implement, and use. At FINRA, she helped make regulatory expectations more understandable and practical for firms, using education, communication, and industry working groups to support safer and more effective practices. At State Street, she helped lead large-scale transformation efforts by connecting executive strategy to the people, systems, and behaviors needed to make the change real.

Across her career, Alison has used story to help people understand what was happening, why it mattered, what needed to change, and how their own work connected to the larger purpose. She believes story is one of the most practical tools we have for building trust, making sense of complexity, moving through resistance, and helping people act with better judgment.

Alison holds an M.Ed. in Curriculum & Instructional Technology and a B.A. in English & Creative Writing with a Minor Study in Cultural Anthropology. She also has advanced professional training in organization development, integrative coaching, learning evaluation, communication, facilitation, and presentation methodologies.

She is excited to support NEST by bringing her experience in growth, transformation, communication, technology adoption, and organizational capacity-building to an organization rooted in the power of stories.