See a photo of Karen, a link to her bio, and Part 1 of this Q&A.
Q&A with Karen Gilliam, PhD (Question 2):
Q: What future aspirations do you personally have for your own story work? What would you like to do in the story world that you haven’t yet done?
A: I’ve become a lot more conscious in my use of story and find that I gravitate toward processes, tools, and curriculum that honors story. Most recently I’ve been facilitating workshops in an organizational environment and working with a young ladies’ mentoring group in the community. Each of these venues respects and honors the individual’s story and in different ways helps participants to recognize their stories and the power that they have to write and re-write their stories.
We all have a story to tell, a chapter that is yet to be completed or
written. I need to capture in writing, in journal or workbook format, what I’ve been experiencing through my own story work and that of others who share a kindred spirit in storytelling. I believe that people, especially our young people, are yearning to find their own voice, to know that they have a unique purpose in life and to be connected to some one or some thing greater than self.
Using story and storytelling to say what people have in their minds and hearts; to allow them to see something they’ve not seen or imagined before (raising their sights, unlocking potential, focusing on possibilities); to find hope and invite others to do the same; and to cause them to want to struggle for some shared aspiration is storytelling leadership. This is a concept, first introduced in my dissertation, that I plan to further examine as a part of my volunteer work with Restore Cleveland Hope, a non-profit organization whose mission is to restore the last known pre-civil house located in Cleveland, Ohio, into an underground-railroad teaching center.