James Warren | Speaking, Workshops + Facilitation
Storytelling, Belonging, Leadership and Human Experience
James Warren is a storyteller, researcher, strategist, facilitator, and the Founder and CEO of Share More Stories.
For more than 25 years, James has helped leaders, organizations, and communities think more deeply about people: who they are, what they have experienced, what they need, and what those experiences mean for how organizations lead, communicate, engage, and grow.
His sessions bring together unique insights, emotional storytelling, leadership, belonging, employee and customer experience, strategic conversation, and practical next steps.
These are not passive presentations or drawn out keynotes.
Whether James is speaking to a conference audience, facilitating a leadership retreat, leading a mini-SEEQ session, or helping a team work through a complex challenge, the experience is designed to be interactive, thoughtful, useful, inspirational and grounded in the real experiences of the people in the room.
WHAT THESE EXPERIENCES ARE DESIGNED TO DO
Organizations often bring James in when they want people to do more than listen.
They want people to reflect. Connect. Have a better conversation. Understand something more deeply. Build alignment. Surface experiences that are not always being said out loud. Leave with clearer ideas about what to do next.
Depending on the engagement, participants may:
- Reflect on the stories and experiences that have shaped how they lead
- Explore belonging, authenticity, trust, psychological safety, and connection
- Share perspectives across roles, backgrounds, functions, or lived experiences
- Identify patterns that matter in employee experience, customer experience, or community
- Build stronger alignment around a challenge, opportunity, strategy, or future direction
- Turn insight into clearer decisions, actions, and priorities
At the center of every engagement is a simple belief:
Stories help people understand themselves, understand one another, and make better decisions.
WAYS TO WORK TOGETHER
Interactive Speaking Engagements
James speaks on leadership, storytelling, belonging, human experience, authenticity, community, culture, customer experience, and the role stories play in helping people understand what data alone cannot explain.
Speaking engagements can be adapted for conferences, leadership programs, board gatherings, employee events, community convenings, retreats, and learning series.
Sessions are built to create participation, not just provide information. Depending on the setting, they can include reflection prompts, audience conversation, storytelling exercises, paired discussion, and practical frameworks participants can use after the event.
Storytelling and Mini-SEEQ Sessions
These highly interactive sessions create space for people to reflect on an experience, put it into words, and share it in a way that helps them learn from themselves and one another.
They can be a standalone workshop, part of a leadership program, the opening or closing experience at a retreat, or the beginning of a larger SEEQ engagement.
Participants may write or record short stories, reflect in pairs or small groups, and explore what their experiences reveal about leadership, belonging, culture, community, customer experience, or change.
There is always a moment in these sessions, whether in person or virtual, when everyone is quietly working on their story — with authenticity, courage and curiosity.
That is where the learning starts.
Strategic Workshops and Facilitated Conversations
James also facilitates workshops for teams that need help moving from broad discussion toward focus, alignment and action.
These can be designed around leadership alignment, stakeholder engagement, strategy development, brand and narrative, customer or employee experience, community engagement, organizational change, or a specific decision the team needs to make.
The goal is to create useful conversation, make space for the perspectives that matter, and help the group leave with clearer priorities and practical next steps.
FEATURED TOPICS
Potential talk or workshop themes include:
- Authentic Leadership: Storytelling, Belonging and the Practice of Leadership
- Becoming and Belonging: Stories as a Leadership Tool
- The Role of Story in Employee Experience, Customer Experience and Community
- Listening Beyond the Survey: Understanding the Why Behind Human Experience
- What Stories Can Teach Us About Connection, Trust and Culture
- Turning Human Experience Into Better Decisions
- Facilitated Strategy, Alignment and Community Conversations
Each engagement can be tailored to your organization, audience, goals, current context, and available time.
WHAT PARTICIPANTS ARE SAYING
After a recent session with the VCU Grace E. Harris Leadership Institute HIGHER Ground program, participants described the experience as deeply impactful and inspirational.
One participant said the idea that personal stories shape who we are as leaders “hit me in my core belief.”
Another shared: “I loved the telling your story session the most because I am freeing my voice.”
Another reflected that the storytelling was validating because much of their personal reflection centered on “creating spaces that allow for authenticity and psychological safety.”
Several participants also said they wished there had been more time to go deeper.
That is the kind of response these experiences are designed to create: not simply a good conversation in the room, but reflection and connection that continue after people leave.
SELECTED APPEARANCES AND PARTNERS
James has spoken, facilitated, or led interactive experiences with organizations and audiences including:
- AB InBev
- AMA Richmond
- Big Dipper Innovation Summit
- CreativeMornings Richmond
- Davenport & Company
- Dominion Due Diligence Group
- Dominion Energy
- Forum for Youth Investment
- Future of StoryTelling
- John Deere
- Leadership Metro Richmond
- Lean Startup
- Mr. Cooper
- New York Life
- Power of Partnership Stewardship Summit
- Techonomy
- Tom Tom Festival Innovation Summit
- Travel & Tourism Research Association
- Travel Oregon
- Travel Unity
- Triangle2 Innovation Summit, focused on YMCA leaders
- United Way of Greater Richmond and Petersburg
- UNOS Transplant Management Forum
- VCU Grace E. Harris Leadership Institute
- Virginia Credit Union
- Virginia Department of Human Resources Management
- Virginia Tourism Corporation
- YMCA of Greater Richmond
And numerous other corporate, nonprofit, and community leadership groups across travel, healthcare, education, energy, financial services and consumer packaged goods sectors.
He has also led workshops and facilitated conversations involving nonprofit boards, university stakeholders, community leaders, employee groups, customer and stakeholder audiences, and cross-sector partnerships.
WATCH + LISTEN
Explore a few examples of James’s Featured Talks and Podcast Appearances.
ABOUT SHARE MORE STORIES AND SEEQ
Share More Stories is a human experience impact company.
Through the SEEQ Platform, we help organizations turn stories into decision intelligence by combining authentic storytelling, emotional analysis, thematic insight, and strategic application.
SEEQ helps leaders better understand and improve employee experience, customer experience, and community experience, so they can achieve greater impact.
The platform is built around a simple idea: people’s stories contain the context, emotion, and meaning that traditional feedback tools often miss.
Workshops, speaking engagements, and mini-SEEQ sessions can stand on their own. They can also be the beginning of a larger engagement designed to help an organization listen more deeply, understand what is happening, and decide what to do next.
SHARE YOUR STORY IN SEEQ
Belonging in the Employee, Customer and Community Experience — From a Leader’s Point of View
What are you seeing in the employee, customer, or community experience that the data is not showing?
Share a few moments that reveal what people are really experiencing: where they feel connected, supported, unseen, excluded, trusted, uncertain, energized, or stuck.
Your story can help deepen our understanding of belonging, and of the ways leaders can create stronger experiences for the people they serve, employ, and engage.
Watch the May 14 Executive Briefing
LET’S TALK
Whether you are planning a conference, retreat, leadership gathering, team experience, community conversation, board meeting, or learning series, we can design something useful for the people in the room.
You can:
- Send James a message on LinkedIn
- Book a conversation
- Download the Speaking Engagement Overview
- Download the Workshop Overview
