Seminars and Workshops

As a senior fellow at Columbia University School of the Arts, Frank heads two distinct initiatives. He is faculty director of the Strategic Storytelling seminar, presented by the School of the Arts’ Digital Storytelling Lab, and he is the DSL’s awards director, having launched the Breakthroughs in Storytelling awards in 2016. He also leads private seminars and workshops for corporate and institutional clients and consults on brand identity issues.

Strategic Storytelling at Columbia

Storytelling is how we explain and make sense of the world. But today, with media-savvy audiences tuning out ads while seeking ever-more-immersive entertainment experiences, the way we need to communicate is changing. Cognitive science suggests that stories are typically more effective at reaching people than rational arguments. We need to view the world in narrative terms, not as a thesis to be argued or a pitch to be made but as a story to be told. Strategic Storytelling is an executive education seminar that shows how stories are used by leading brands, entertainment industry professionals, B2B providers and nonprofits—and what each of these can learn from the other.

Strategic Storytelling is currently on hiatus and will resume in 2024. For more information, please contact Frank.

Academic Symposia and Master Classes

In addition to his Columbia seminar, Frank leads master classes and workshops and takes part in conferences at academic institutions worldwide.

Co-organizer and speaker
Cooper Hewitt-Columbia DSL Storytelling Salon
Cooper Hewitt,
Smithsonian Design Museum
New York, March 28, 2017

Private Workshops and Consulting

Frank leads private workshops tailored to the needs of select corporate and institutional clients. He also consults with agencies and their clients on brand identity issues: brand purpose, brand promise, brand narrative and brand voice. To see how this might work for you, please contact Frank.

Brand positioning and story creation for Siili Solutions, the Helsinki-based technology platform
Nov. 2017-Jan. 2018

“Embracing Analog:
Why Physical Is Hot”
Co-author of a survey and trend report on attitudes about digital v. physical for JWT Intelligence
March 2013

Keynote speaker
Johnson & Johnson Content Strategy Immersion workshop
IPG/Ensemble
Los Angeles, Aug. 1, 2011

Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab

The Digital Storytelling Lab at Columbia University School of the Arts is a next-generation media lab harnessing the arts, humanities and emergent technologies to tackle some of the world’s impossible problems through collaboration, experimentation, exploration and creativity.

Columbia DSL designs stories for the 21st century, building on a diverse range of creative and research practices while never losing sight of the power of a good story. It is a place of speculation, creativity, and collaboration between students and faculty from across the University. New stories are told here in fresh and unexpected ways. Learn More…

The Breakthroughs in Storytelling Awards

The DSL’s annual Breakthroughs in Storytelling Awards celebrate the past year’s most innovative approaches to narrative. Launched in 2016 to spur creativity and further the Lab’s educational mission, the awards honor 12 signal achievements—the “Digital Dozen.” Out of these, the Breakthrough Award goes to the project in any field that best exemplifies the spirit of inventiveness at work today, while the Special Jury Prize is given at the discretion of the awards committee. Winners are chosen by an interdisciplinary jury of Lab members and university faculty. The awards aim to further digital media’s potential to break free of rigid, industrial-age classifications and evolve in ways that analog media could not.

Learn more about the Breakthroughs in Storytelling Awards…

Past recipients of the Columbia Digital Storytelling Lab’s Breakthrough Award include:

2023: Dreamachine

Inspired by a stroboscopic device invented at the “Beat Hotel” in Paris in 1959, Dreamachine generates an intense visual experience that takes place behind closed eyes, completely unique to each individual.

2022: Life After BOB: The Chalice Study

What would happen if a mad scientist implanted his daughter with an AI at birth? Ian Cheng’s game-engine-driven anime combines a computer simulation with scripted storytelling.

2021: Darkfield Radio

In response to the pandemic, David Rosenberg and Glen Neath of London’s Darkfield immersed audiences in strange worlds in their own homes, bringing new meaning to the familiar spaces we inhabit.

2020: Facial Recognition Machine

Using off-the-shelf technology, Sahil Chinoy of The New York Times dramatically highlighted facial recognition’s threat to individual freedom.