Moderator: Lani Peterson: Known for telling and midwifing personal stories, Lani is a storyteller, psychologist, and story consultant. With a specialty in story as a healing art, Lani has been storytelling, leading workshops and teaching about healing story at universities, organizations, hospitals, homeless shelters and prisons for over 20 years.  Her ongoing mission is to enable stories which open doors within and between storytellers and listeners alike.

Annie Brewster is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and an Internist at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is also a patient, diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Motivated by her belief in the power of stories to improve health, Annie started recording patient narratives. Now as the founder of Health Story Collaborative, she continues to see first-hand how the process of storytelling is therapeutic both for the storytellers and the listeners.

Juliet Bruce is a healing story practitioner in New York City. Working with the frameworks of the ancient myth and improvisational writing, she has helped hundreds of individuals, families, and communities find their inspired way out of crisis to a happier, more purposeful existence. She is finishing a combination memoir and workbook, A Write of Passage: Healing Story for a New World.

Anne Hallward is the host and founder of Safe Space Radio and a board-certified psychiatrist in Portland, Maine. Formerly on the faculty at Harvard Medical School, she designed and taught courses on death and dying, cultural competence, sexuality, and psychiatric interviewing. She specializes in subjects that are hard to talk about. Anne speaks internationally on emotional courage, stigma and shame, and traumatic silence.

Richard Stone, author of The Healing Art of Storytelling has been bringing the practical applications of storytelling into all facets of business, healthcare, education, and society through StoryWork International. He also created the LivingStories program for Novant Health, which facilitates patients’ telling their life stories to improve their health outcomes.

David Yoder is a chiropractor with deep interest in the mind/body connection as it applies to healing.  Sensing connections between clients’ painful childhood memories and their current physical pains, Yoder created opportunities within sessions for clients to tell their stories, opening his research/understanding into heart rate variability, EMDR and vagus nerve stimulation.