ULUstory: power up your stories

Deb engages her audience immediately. She clearly explains the science behind powerful storytelling, and walks all the listeners through a simple process to find and craft short but powerful personal stories Her engagements are frequently interactive, thought-provoking, and every listener always walks away with a set of focused tools to help them build a "suitcase of stories."

The child of two tough Bronx parents, Deb grew up in Ghana and Switzerland. A graduate of Brandeis University, she received her law degree from Hastings College of the Law (now UC School of Law SF), University of California, in 1981. She served first in the public sector, as Regional Director for the Westchester Office for the NYS Attorney General’s Office, and then Director of Legal Affairs for the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation. Moving to the private sector in 1995, she joined Kirkpatrick & Silverberg LLP, focusing on sexual harassment and discrimination.

In 1999, she founded Interfacet Inc., a consultancy to provide training, fact-finding and mediation on harassment, diversity and workplace-based conflict. A great believer in the intelligent use of emerging technologies to support better communication across divides, in 2011 she developed diversityDNA®, a web-based app which allows users to explore their own internal communication rules and compare with others, to connect more effectively. During this decade she also served as interim Executive Director of Pace Women’s Justice Clinic, and co-founded Pace University’s ground-breaking New Directions program.

Deb discovered the extraordinary power of true storytelling as a communications instructor at Iona College and Norwalk Community College ((phone number hidden)6). To help her students make friends, feel included, and improve presentations, she taught them all storytelling skills – her hundreds of students bloomed and connected across perceived barriers, outside of their “groups”, making friendships which last through today. At Iona, she founded and ran the wildly successful Student Story Slam for 6 semesters, receiving a teaching award for her efforts (2013). She also received faculty teaching awards from Norwalk Community College (2015) and the Connecticut Board of Regents (2016), for her innovative and inclusive use of storytelling.

From 2016 through 2020, she served as VP, Human Resources and General Counsel for Mulligan Security in Manhattan (where she heard numerous stories). In 2020, admitted to a Westchester-based business accelerator program, Launch 1000, she developed ULUstory™: power up your stories, an app to help users find, craft and share their true stories to create trust, empathy and inclusion across barriers, with strangers and even people we don’t like. Gaining swift traction, ULUstory was then admitted into Conscious Venture Lab accelerator, completed in 2022. Today, ULUstory’s clients of note have included Pinterest, Fordham University, and the Westchester County Commission on Human Rights. Deb's super-power is helping everybody find and tell their amazing stories. Many of Deb’s own stories relate to her beloved multi-cultural, multi-talented and deeply strange family.

Deb prefers to have a screen behind her, to use a memorable, curiosity sparking set of slides to help her audience easily remember her basic messages. She also prefers to have internet and wifi available so that she can show a very short video as well as interact with attendees via polls and surveys.