About Jason
In 1992, as one of a three person team running for the student council executive at his university, Jason was kicking off a presentation to a room full of 400 engineers, with his zipper, unknowingly, fully down. His response to learning this and the audience’s reaction taught him the power of making an emotional connection.
30 years later Jason brings a perspective around Strategic Storytelling that is rooted in learnings from working with companies like Disney, Warner Brothers, Electronic Arts, National Geographic, the CBC, Ogilvy & Mather and Sheridan College. His passion is sharing insights to help leaders and organizations stop wasting money and start increasing profits.
Jason believes in the power of our creative muscle and with the frameworks he created from working in the film, television, video game, post secondary education and advertising industries, he helps all those he works with to flex it more often to build confidence, clarity and conviction. And still to this day, before every keynote speech, workshop or facilitation, he checks his zipper.
The Story of a Shirt
For 5 years every week 150 students gave me an hour of their time to attend ANIM 17198: STORY DEVELOPMENT and my accompanying lecture. I took that commitment seriously and each lecture was a purposeful mix of pedagogy, entertainment and a shirt. My shirts were a reflection of my personality and a deliberate antithesis to the cliched professorial corduroy jacket with suede elbow patches. I sourced them from thrift stores and high end men’s clothing shops, the more colourful the better.
On the final class one spring semester my students all showed up wearing coats. Inside. In April. "Interesting", I remember thinking. At the end of the lecture I thanked them for a great term and wished them well with their summer plans. In unison, they stood and removed their jackets revealing a colourful mix of shirts. Turns out they'd loved my shirts, creating stories about them and making playful bets on which would appear each week. It was a thing. Our thing. I was deeply touched.
Thanks to that class, every keynote, workshop, coaching and training I've done for the last twelve years has been paired with a shirt. And nary a session has gone by without at least one person commenting, further proving the power of an emotional connection.
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