Narrative Intelligence · Strategy · Coaching
If you are facing a consequential decision, transition, or problem without a clear playbook, the story shaping how you see it matters.
I’m Paige Williams, a Narrative Strategist building the field of Narrative Intelligence. I work privately with founders, executives, researchers, and creators shaping what’s next, helping them see the story shaping the moment, sort what is true from what is assumed, and choose what to do about it.
Founder & CEO, StoryKeys · Founder & Executive Producer, 100 Stories Project · Author, The Twelve Creative Keys
The Work
StoryKeys
StoryKeys turns Narrative Intelligence research into assessments, decision tools, and organizational applications designed to help people and teams examine the stories shaping how they interpret what is happening, determine what is true, see more possibilities, and choose what happens next.
Explore StoryKeys100 Stories
100 Stories is a podcast, public inquiry, and upcoming national festival exploring how stories shape identity, judgment, culture, behavior, and change.
Listen to the podcast Explore 100 StoriesNarrative Intelligence
Narrative Intelligence is a human capacity for working consciously with the stories through which we interpret experience. Paige’s research explores five proposed capacities: Recognition, Discernment, Flexibility, Agency, and Enactment.
Explore the researchHow to work with me
Private Client Work
I work privately with founders, executives, researchers, creators, and social-impact leaders who are building, leading, and deciding without a playbook.
Narrative executive coaching is the center of the practice. Strategic advisory and applied research are there when the work calls for them.
Bring me the hard thing you’re trying to figure out.
Speaking
Keynotes, executive sessions, and facilitated conversations on Narrative Intelligence, human judgment, leadership, creativity, and change.
For Organizations
Through StoryKeys, Paige works with organizations applying Narrative Intelligence to consequential decisions, leadership, culture, and organizational judgment.
From the work
A leader releasing the story that harder work is the only answer. A research team translating innovation science into language their field can recognize. An organization making decisions while the plan keeps changing. The common thread is learning to see what is shaping the problem before deciding what to do about it.
Narrative Intelligence + Leadership
From pushing harder to leading with clarity
Applied Research + Innovation Strategy
Making innovation visible enough to study
Human Judgment + Rapid Change
When the plan changes before the work is finished
What people say
Real words from leaders and teams who have worked with Paige — through coaching, advisory, speaking, and organizational engagements.
Read client stories“Paige quickly engaged with and earned the trust of our leadership guests and set the tone at the very beginning of our retreat. She did a beautiful job of bringing people together to share their challenges, helping participants feel less alone and more open to learning and growing together.”
Organizations
Paige helps leaders and teams make sense of complexity, challenge outdated assumptions, and make clearer decisions when technology, strategy, roles, and expectations are moving without a stable playbook.
Engagements include executive strategy sessions, leadership-team workshops, organizational labs, ongoing advisory, and listening and research work.
#1 Amazon Best Seller
A pathway to clarity, courage, and meaningful action in your next chapter.
There are moments when the life you built, the identity you carried, or the story you believed no longer fits. The Twelve Creative Keys is for those moments.
Drawing from Paige Williams’ experience of creativity, entrepreneurship, loss, reinvention, and beginning again, the book explores twelve human capacities that help us move through uncertainty without abandoning ourselves.
Documentary Films
Paige makes documentary films about the stories shaping people, communities, and systems — from foster care and child welfare to rural entrepreneurship, identity, faith, and belonging.
Some open conversations. Some influence systems. All begin with getting close enough to the story to see what is really there.
Explore the films100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project
Through conversations with leaders, researchers, creators, educators, and thinkers, Paige is exploring how stories shape identity, agency, leadership, and change.
The project is built around one central inquiry:
How malleable are the stories we live by, and what does it take to change one?
Latest episode
Free exercise
5 questions to see what's shaping your hardest decision — a free Narrative Intelligence practice for innovators.
I’m Paige Williams, a Narrative Intelligence researcher, founder, and narrative executive coach. I work with people building and leading things that matter, especially when what comes next is not obvious.
For more than a decade I built AudPop, a media technology company that grew into a global community of more than 80,000 filmmakers and creators. I have raised money, led teams, changed direction, made hard calls, closed chapters, and begun again.
Today I study how the stories we inherit, absorb, construct, and repeat shape what we notice, what we believe is possible, and how we lead. I also work directly with leaders who need to see those stories clearly enough to decide what happens next.
I am the author of The Twelve Creative Keys and the founder and executive producer of 100 Stories, a podcast and upcoming national festival about the stories we live by and what it takes to change them.
If something no longer fits, that is often where the real work begins.
The Narrative Intelligence Project — essays, research notes, and new 100 Stories conversations, straight to your inbox.