Ruth Halpern brings over 20 years experience teaching effective business communication and storytelling to the Mobius team. Her background includes corporate training, improvisational theater, and professional storytelling. As the founder and president of Halpern & Associates, Ruth has conducted focus groups, performed needs analyses, designed and delivered high-level technical training, written documentation, and managed projects ranging from two to 12 months in length, serving organizations of 20 to 1,000 users. She provides one-on-one intensive storytelling coaching for presenters, public speakers, and seminar leaders consults organizations to help craft their stories through workshops, seminars, and story circles, resulting in a multi-media narrative that may take the form of a book, press release, presentation, video, slide show, and/or website.
As a corporate trainer and training designer since 1983, Ruth has emphasized the use of narrative to communicate, connect, and inspire. She is known for her lively, inclusive presentation style and the broad range of stories she tells. Her work as a narrative practitioner focuses on the use of stories to motivate and inspire people in the corporate and legal industries.Supported by many studies of psychology and the brain, she has observed that people are natural story-makers, and that the challenge at the leadership level is to craft positive, inspiring stories, as well as to confront those stories that prevent organizations from growing and changing.
Ruth’s immersion in narrative technique and tradition gives her a unique perspective on one of the most demanding aspects of leadership: inspiring and motivating audiences through the power of stories. Her custom storytelling workshops for audiences ranging from state agencies and Departments of Justice to non-profit organizations and arts groups, have been acclaimed for their practical, focused exercises that help participants craft stories that successfully move people towards change. Storytelling clients include Trust for Public Lands, California ReLeaf, Center for Culinary Development, Alameda County Public Schools, and Doulas and birth mothers.
In addition to her work in the corporate sphere, she performs and teaches storytelling to adults in retreat settings, as well as in corporate board rooms, theaters, and storytelling festivals. The Los Angeles Times calls Ruth “a spell-binding master storyteller.” Her storytelling career began with a major in “Forms of Narrative.” She then taught “Management Communications” to professionals, focusing on their written and oral presentation skills. This led to a three-year teaching position at JFK University’s School of Management in Orinda, California, and to the expansion of her consulting practice.
Ruth is a Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude graduate from the University of California at Berkeley.
