Carol Burbank is an award-winning published writer, both creative and non-fiction genres, and an transformative educator, coach and consultant. After 20 years of teaching, journalism, and scholarly research, she founded Storyweaving Coaching to nurture creativity and sustainable change. Storyweaving combines her passion for writing, teaching, and mentoring in a unique combination of skills that hold a playful, practical space for individuals and organizations to free themselves from outmoded and unhealthy stories.
Her work has been central to supporting innovation in institutional settings. She was a leader in the core team to develop a holistic coaching program for Sofia University's MA in Transpersonal Psychology. Carol pioneered the interdisciplinary Performance Studies curriculum at the University of Maryland, and currently teaches an experiential course in the arts and social change specifically designed for Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, CA. Carol also teaches in the University of New England's Educational Leadership Ph.D. program, providing archetype training and dissertation advising as well as lead teaching in their advanced level courses.
Transformative Consulting
As a consultant for Tilson Diaz Solutions and through Storyweaving, she is part of an initiative with the National Alliance Pipeline for Equity (NAPE) to train community leaders, teachers and administrators in best practices to support self-determination and job transition success for people with disabilities. The project is currently active in the state of Delaware, and is preparing for national launch.
Her play, Shelter, was a finalist at the prestigious Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwright's Institute and produced in Baltimore, MD. Her poetry has been published in anthologies and journals such as Rolling Stone, and A Room of One's Own. For 20 years, she served as a theater critic for the Chicago Reader and other weekly and monthly arts publications. She is a regular columnist on spirituality and leadership for Science of Mind Magazine, and On Purpose Woman.
Her research on leadership and education has appeared in multiple anthologies and academic journals, including Women and Leadership, Global Women's Leadership, The Transforming Leader, Integral Leadership Review, Theorizing Women and Leadership, and Indigenous Issues and Culture. Most recently, she was the primary researcher and author of a groundbreaking literature review about inclusion for students with disabilities, published March, 2019 through the National Alliance and Pipeline for Equity (NAPE).
Her research into story and archetype as forces to support healthy change have generated a self-help system that builds confidence, vision, and creativity. Her first workbook, Storyweaving Playbook One: Answer the Call to Adventure was published in 2015. Her second, Shifting Free: Finding Your Natural Shapeshifter Resilience, is due in 2019.
What is Storyweaving?
Careful research into learning, creativity, and healing teach reveal that our culture seems to work on two contradictory principles that actually sabotage sustainable change:
We value most challenges that are hard, because they demonstrate that we have earned our achievements. Our greatest tool, playful experimentation is suspect because of this.
At the same time, we yearn for easy answers, make heroes out of people who offer get-rich quick schemes, and substitute entertainment and magical thinking for sustainable change. Conscious, playful experimentation doesn't provide instant gratification, but it can be fun, productive, and transformative.
The Storyweaving solution harnesses creativity and play to energize change outside of this contradictory tape-loop, using specific holistic strategies to support each unique client by holding their vision and goals at the center of the process. Combining experience with teaching, writing, coaching and mentoring with her passion for genuinely empowering creatives and visionaries, Storyweaving is both her calling and the culmination of years of research and practice.
CERTIFICATIONS AND DEGREES
Ph.D. Cultural Studies, Northwestern University
Examined the process of individual and cultural change, with interdisciplinary research in sociology, psychology, and performance studies.
MA, Creative Writing, Boston University
HOLISTIC TRAINING:
Biodynamic Cranial Sacral Therapy
Hawaiian Cranial Sacral Therapy
Co-active Life Coaching
Traditional Hawaiian Energetics and Ho'oponopono
Facilitator, CAPT's Pearson Marrs Archetype Indicator